I want to be Catherine

I know heroes. I have lived among them for years. I've known police officers, federal agents, soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines since I could walk. Firefighters, EMTs and emergency room doctors and nurses are in my immediate circle of friends. I wish I could be more like them, but I don't want to BE them.

I want to be my mother. Electa Catherine Kee Mead, known most of her life as "Kitty" and in recent years as "Catherine" is my hero. Born into a sharecropping family of displaced Irishmen in West Virginia, Catherine was a beautiful child, inside and out. When my father met her, he was in the Navy and she was engaged to someone else. He swept her off her feet (funnily enough, this is still very hard for me to imagine...) and they were married shortly thereafter. They bore three children and adopted three more. I was their last born child. After my two older sisters were born the doctors informed her that she would be unable to bear any more children. She disagreed, saying that she needed to have a son so that she could give him to the Lord. Like Hannah, she prayed and, like Hannah, once I was born I was marked for the Lord's service -- like it or not!

My mother had surgery last Monday. It was a difficult surgery, but they assure us she will be fine. She has had a hard life. I could take a lot of cheap shots here and comment on how hard it must be to live with my father for over 55 years, but I'll resist the impulse. For now. Instead, I will remind you that this is a 75 year old woman who has spent a lifetime walking down jungle paths, sleeping on hard dirt floors, taking falls on icy streets in Siberia and Ukraine, and sipping cups of watered down tea in drafty living rooms in Scotland. For the sake of the Kingdom, she has worn her body out.

And yet... she remains the single most optimistic and the sweetest person I have ever known. Physically small (I call her my Pocket Mom), her huge, beautiful eyes still radiate grace and welcome to all who see her. When she came out of surgery and slowly woke up, she was battling pain, anesthesia, and a morphine drip and yet -- as the nurses all said in awe -- she smiled at each person who came near and asked them how they were doing, complimenting them on their hard work and thanking them for their attention.

She never asks for anything. She gives, instead. There are many, many things in her life that should have caused her to turn bitter, depressed, or morose but she refuses. Not all of her children are in the faith. Some have turned to, not just sinful, but evil ways of life. She prays for them daily and lives in hope that they can yet be reached by the gospel, even if they won't accept her calls. While she recovers, her greatest concern is that she be well enough to travel the hour and a half it takes them to get to the small church across the river in Kentucky where my father preaches every Sunday (when he is in the country). When I suggest that bowel surgery might mean she needs to stay home for a couple of weeks and give church meetings a miss my suggestions are -- graciously and with love -- swept aside. Of COURSE she is going to go to church!

Steady in her faith, absolutely fierce in her love, gentle and sweet beyond description. I want to be my mother.

She is my hero. Once, when I was a boy, a neighborhood bully who was so overgrown for his age he qualified for group rates for insurance and travel purposes came to attack me. That wasn't hard to do as I wasn't exactly combat-ready at the age of five. I remember being knocked down and feeling him climb on me, jumping up and down on my stomach. The next thing I remember is a banshee's cry and his head changing shape as a broom connected with it. He dropped like a rock and then scrambled to his feet as she pursued him out of the yard. I never saw him again.

But I saw her in a new light. She's my hero.

On Monday, after a painful, difficult surgery, the nurses pulled me aside and said, "We see a lot of angels here, but all of them sprout horns under anesthesia and when they are in pain. But not Catherine." I told them, "That's because this is who she really is."

I'm not Catherine yet, but I want to be.