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The Art of Service and Reconciliation
My mom passed away on October 25, 2006. I will remember that day for the rest of my life. There is not a day that goes by that I don’t think of her.
That day solidified for me a lesson I had been learning for almost twenty years, but never fully realized it until several years after she died. I asked if I could speak at her funeral, which turned out to be one of the most difficult talks I have ever had to present.
It was a Wednesday, and I received a call from my sister. She couldn’t even get the words out, so my brother-in-law, Jason, had to give me the news. The shock of that phone call sent me reeling. It was difficult to function, but I had to get my senses about me. My wife was in Maryland for her internship in oral surgery, and I had a six-year-old and a twelve-year-old to take care of, not to mention a business to place on hold.
It took me almost sixteen hours to get from Los Angeles to Baltimore. It was during that plane trip that I had an opportunity to think about my mom, her thirty-three years of influence in my life. I had a chance to process an event that would forever change what I thought about relationships.
A Lesson in Serving
For as long as I can remember, my mom was the last one to bed and the first one awake in the morning. I sometimes wondered if she actually slept. It was almost an unspoken expectation that Wynnelle Chrystal would answer the call to serve at church or in the neighborhood, and she was the one who got things done where she worked.
She always found ways to serve others. People loved her. She talked to anyone…I mean everyone literally! My father once told me she would talk to a wall if no one else would listen. She was one of the most relational people I