Tribute to June Clemmer, my "Ma"

There is only one difficult aspect in writing a tribute to my mother and that is to capture succinctly through words not only the strength of character my mom possesses but also all the ways I admire her and have benefited from being her daughter.

One characteristic that is strikingly obvious about my mom is her love for her home and her children. She has always used whatever resources were available to her (and at times, it was very tight financially) to make her home a place of comfort, productivity, beauty and refuge. She has never strived to find a place outside the home, but has gratefully and eagerly embraced her role as a home manager and has done so much to impart to me and all her children the skills necessary in keeping a home running smoothly.

I can imagine the temptation was great for my mom to do the necessary chores herself as she could do so more efficiently and to a higher standard than she could expect from her children. However, my mom chose what I believe is the harder path by diligently instructing us on home care and home management basics. She also faithfully oversaw or checked our work to ensure that we were really learning and excelling in the various tasks she had assigned to us. Though this was not enjoyable as a child, I am now reaping the benefits of her faithful training. While there is always room for improvement, home management and taking care of my home’s cleaning needs is an area that seems to come naturally to me. There has been very little learning curve for me in these areas as my mother excelled in preparing her daughters in particular for this unique role in the home.

My mom also excels in opening not only her home but her heart to all who are graced to know her. This is the epitome of hospitality, I believe, and my mom excels in extending this gift to others. She gives much thought to the details of what might bless her guests and has done so especially for her own children now that most of us are grown up and moved out of her home. She plans ahead to ensure bed sheets are cleaned, towels are ready and a place is created especially for her guest. She thinks through her meals, keeping in mind the particular food preferences of all her children to accommodate us as best she can.
Not only for the planned guest, but for the many who simply drop in on occasion (which in my mom’s house is really a daily occurrence), she has her home and her heart ready to receive anyone who might knock on her door. She does this by having meals, snacks and/or drinks at the ready, by keeping her home tidy and well organized and by posturing herself to entertain oft times uninvited “angels”. So much does my mom excel in hospitality that there have been numerous holidays, intended to be “family only” occasions, where a friend or neighbor has felt the freedom to drop in and make himself at home with us. To experience my mom’s hospitality is to be loved and cared for in a way that leaves one feeling less like royalty and more like family. And, I believe that’s why her home is always full of people!

Though my mom works hard giving of herself to others, she spends most of her energy pouring out her life first and foremost for her husband and her children. Among the many and various practical ways she serves her family, her encouragement to each of her children to walk with the Lord has been one that has brought significant blessing to my life. She has walked beside each of her children through some incredibly challenging circumstances, often causing her to be confronted with her inadequacies to direct our hearts into God’s love and Christ’s perseverance. In these times, she has thrown herself on the mercy and wisdom of God, appealing to us as necessary, reminding us of truth and ultimately entrusting us to the faithfulness of God. Due in large part to my mom’s faithful prayers, all of her children are believers in Christ and seeking to glorify God with our lives.

Of all the things that I cherish so much about my mom (and there are so many more qualities than I mentioned here), the quality I admire the most and am most humbled by is her perseverance to grow in godliness. There have been many hardships and trials in my mom’s life. Her parents were divorced while she was still young, and her mother died from breast cancer when she was only 8 years old. Along with her older sister, my mom was passed around to various family members to be cared for throughout portions of her childhood.

When she became an adult and married my father, she knew financial hardship most of their 18 years of marriage. A primary factor for the financial strain was the fact that she and my dad were committed to sending three of their four children to a Christian School. She cared for my father for two years while he battled brain cancer and eventually endured the loss of his life. She was thrust back into the work force after being home with children for 15 or more years in order to help provide for her four, and at that time, fatherless children.

She remarried within a year’s time of my father’s death to a man who had experienced the loss of his wife through a hit and run car accident. My stepdad’s wife was killed only months after my father passed away and by divine orchestration, my mom and stepdad were set up on a blind date, to be married only four months after they had first met. My mom chose to move her home, her family and her life to build a new one with her new husband. She faced the additional challenge of taking on the responsibility to love and care for my stepdad’s three children as well. So in total, she had a new husband and seven children, ranging in ages from 2 to 16, all responding in unique ways to the grief of losing a parent and the stress of adjusting to our new, blended family. She has also endured many years of chronic back, hip and leg pain among the more significant of bodily ailments she has suffered.

As they would for anyone, these circumstances have presented temptations to grow angry and bitter, to give into self-pity or to be anxious for the future, to mistrust God and chose to go one’s own way. But, by the grace of God, my mom has fought the good fight and continues to press into God to know experientially the freedom from these sins that Christ’s blood has bought for her. Has she done this perfectly? No. But, she has done this genuinely to be sure.

As I walk through my own hardships and trials that God has graciously brought into my life, I do not have to look far for an example of how to persevere and consider them pure joy. My mom is a living testimony of suffering producing perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.
If you met my mom, not having read this tribute, you would be struck by her joy. She would tell you what a blessed woman she is. She would tell you how rich and full her life has been and continues to be. She would tell you that she has the best life a person could have and that God has been so good to her. Above all my mom has exemplified for me, this quality of humility and how to fight for joy in God, recognizing that no matter what circumstance we find ourselves in, we have been treated better than we deserve, is by far the quality I most want to emulate.

She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come. Ps. 31: 25

Mom, while my words are woefully inadequate, I pray the life that I live, patterned greatly after you, will do a better job of rising up and calling you blessed.

“To God be the glory
Great things He has done.”