Morning Found Her Standing

For KFran

All photos taken via mobile phone with no touch up or filters


Some people spend their lives climbing mountains.
Some spend their lives carrying them.
My mother never had much time to admire the view.

By the time most girls were worrying about school dances, she was learning the language of cattle. Feed sacks. Sale barns. Dust that settled into your boots before daylight. The work did not care how old you were. The cows did not know the difference between a grown woman and a teenage girl.

Life arrived early.
She married before childhood let go of her hand.
At seventeen, she was holding mine instead.
Life never stopped asking more of her than seemed fair.
Broken marriages.
Hard work that took more than it ever gave back.
Long drives down Georgia highways.
Wrecks that could have ended differently.
Bills that refused to wait.
Funerals where another chair sat empty.

I have watched her leave before sunrise, boots already dusty before most folks had poured their first cup of coffee. The cattle did not care if your heart was breaking.
Neither did the bills.

Morning found her standing.
There were seasons when I thought I understood her.
Now I know I was only watching from the outside.
Children often mistake survival for distance.
Years later, you discover there is a difference.
Some people grow quiet because they stop caring.
Others grow quiet because life has handed them more than words can carry.

Morning found her standing.
The hardest day may have been the day her twin brother died.
Twins share something the rest of us can only imagine.
They do not simply lose a brother or sister.
They lose the only person who remembers the beginning exactly as they do.

Some grief does not disappear.
It simply learns to whisper.

Morning found her standing.
The older I become, the less impressed I am by people who appear strong.
I am far more moved by people who quietly refuse to quit.

That is my mother.
Not because life spared her.
Because it did not.
Back in the Basin, the old live oaks tell the truth.
The strongest limbs are usually the ones the storms nearly claimed.
You can still see where the lightning struck.
You can still trace the scars beneath the bark.
Yet every spring, new leaves.

Not because the tree forgot the storm.
Because life kept flowing through the roots.
That has always reminded me of KFran.
Not untouched.
Not unscarred.
Still growing.

If I could stand beside that sixteen-year-old bride.
If I could look into the eyes of that seventeen-year-old mother holding a little towheaded boy she could not possibly imagine growing into a man.
I would tell her this.

Keep going.
The road ahead will ask everything you have.
There will be days when your heart is heavier than your hands.
There will be losses no one can explain.
There will be mornings when getting out of bed is the bravest thing you do.
But one day that little boy will finally understand.
He was not watching a woman who had all the answers.
He was watching a woman who kept getting back up.

Perhaps that is the greatest inheritance a parent can leave.
Because faith is not always loud.
Sometimes faith puts its boots back on before daylight.

Mom.

The road has been long.
Longer than most people know.
You have carried burdens few ever saw.
You have survived things many never would.
The storms left their names across your life.
They never took your ability to stand.

When I think of you now, I do not first remember the pain.
I remember the sunrise.
Because somehow, after every heartbreak, after every funeral, after every wreck, after every disappointment, morning always found you standing.
And after all these years, I still believe in you.
Even more importantly, I believe the God who carried you this far is not finished with your story.
Not even close.

Boutwell Jones

redclaygospel.com