Her children rise up and call her blessed

Today, I sit with Deborah Talbert, wife of Pastor Bud Talbert in Edmonton, Alberta, and mother of five wonderful children. One of those children is my husband, Dave. I am eternally grateful to this woman for the way that she raised her son to become a wise and faithful husband and a kind and wonderful father. I am also thankful for the many, many hours of counsel she has given me over the last 20 years, not to mention the hours she has devoted to prayer for me and my family.

I shouldn’t be writing about Proverbs 31 until the end of this month, but my heart is so full of this phrase, “Her children rise up and call her blessed,” that I cannot write about anything else. As I sit next to her and see her body weakened to an extreme by the cancer that she is fighting right now, I just can’t think of anything else except for those words and the thankfulness I feel for the way she has enriched my life.

My mother-in-law is coming toward the end of her life. Psalm 23 verse 4 says, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” These words are more than a child’s prayer for us right now. They are words that ring with profound truth for the entire Talbert family as we walk this valley with Mom right now. The day that we celebrated the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ to this earth, December 25, her health took a severe turn for the worse, and she hasn’t been eating much or able to move much for the last 2 weeks. I am writing this now as a tribute to her and as a sort of update to the many people who have been praying for us this year. Mom used to write her own updates, but she is so weak right now that she’s not able to do that. In the process, I’ll explain how God has turned our world upside down, and how He is working through it all.

Our world turned upside down

In the spring of 2022, Dave and I were entering our 15^th year of working and living Shanghai. My husband taught English and did administration work for an international program in a medical university, and I taught English to Chinese college freshmen. We had lived on that campus our entire time in China, and we loved living and working there. We loved the students there as well as our coworkers. Our children were all born in Shanghai and have been part of local Chinese schools. Even though the COVID outbreak had prevented us from coming back to North America for three years, we were planning on staying another year without seeing family, in hope that travel would be easier the following summer. (We’d been doing that since 2019.) We knew that leaving China might mean that getting back in would be impossibly expensive or just simply impossible because of paperwork, so we didn’t feel that we should leave. That was what we were thinking during the Chinese New Year and the beginning of 2022.

On March 14, after a few weeks of COVID cases causing schools to do massive testing in Shanghai, our university decided to go into lockdown mode. They gave students a few days’ notice and gave them the choice to stay inside the locked campus or go home and do classes online. Because we live on campus, we were required to be in lockdown with the students who decided to stay. This was a frustrating proposition, as most of the people we knew were living normally at that point, but as more and more cases popped up, it became obvious that the situation was not going to improve quickly. We tried to make the best of it, throwing a quarantine-themed birthday party for our son Paul, who had been planning on inviting classmates over but was content to celebrate in lockdown, requesting only that we have a piñata—a piñata that we ended up making into the shape of a coronavirus so that we could beat it to shreds.

Things got worse. We watched in shock as people around the city were taken to quarantine centers, and we heard frightening stories of parents and children being separated by illness and quarantine. We prayed that things would improve and that people would be able to recover at home. I started to thank God that our campus had been locked down ahead of time because it meant that we were not as likely to have been exposed to the virus.

Then, on April 5, after a major holiday, there was a city-wide lockdown, and no one was able to leave their homes. We thanked God that the policy changed to allow parents to stay with children, and we watched and waited, packing emergency bags in case we were required to go to a quarantine center, and trotting out to our athletic field to be tested each and every day.

But almost overnight, COVID and quarantine centers became relatively small concerns. On April 14, Dave’s mom, dear Mom Talbert, whom we had been separated from for 3 years, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. As we prayed for her surgery, and for future direction, God clearly showed us that He wanted us to go back to Canada for the summer, regardless of what that meant for our future in China. We bought tickets, got paperwork in order, and worked through the rest of the semester. When we left on June 15, our campus was in its 95^th day of lockdown.

Her example of God’s grace day by day

We have been so thankful to be back with family after such a long separation, and we pray every day for our dear friends in Shanghai. Although we lost our home, our possessions, our livelihood, and the work that we have been doing for more than a decade, we have not lost our God, who has a good plan for us. He has a good plan for Mom Talbert, too. God tells us that through Jesus Christ, we will have life forever with God. The apostle Paul explains it this way in Romans 8:

⁹ You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. ¹⁰ But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. ¹¹ And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.

 ⁹ 　神的灵既然住在你们里面，你们就不是属于肉体，而是属于圣灵的了。如果人没有基督的灵，就不是属于基督的。 ¹⁰ 基督若在你们里面，你们的身体因着罪的缘故是死的，而圣灵却因着义的缘故赐给你们生命。 ¹¹ 如果那使耶稣从死人中复活者的灵住在你们里面，那使基督从死人中复活的，也必借着住在你们里面的圣灵，使你们必死的身体活过来。

Paul tells us that God has such amazing things planned for us that

¹⁸ I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 

我看现在的苦难，与将要向我们显出的荣耀，是无法相比的。

Now, as we wait with mom for her to see the good things that God has in store for her on the other side of eternity, we praise Him for the way He provides.

I sit this afternoon at the feet of my mother-in-law, massaging her feet and praying over her, and my heart is filled with thankfulness for God’s work in her life and how He has used her to bless so many. Throughout the small town of Beaumont where she lives, you can see small handmade cards she has dispersed to various people to thank them for their customer service, help, and care as she did her daily errands. Women in multiple churches throughout this area have been blessed with her counsel. When I was struggling through depression a few years ago, she was a wise counselor, helping me to focus on scripture and lift my eyes heavenward. She has been a patient mother, whose children wholeheartedly rise up and call her blessed.

For me, watching how she struggled with her health for so much of her adult life and seeing how she patiently endured, constantly growing in grace and relying on God—these have had a huge influence on my life. I struggled with severe fatigue since the age of 16, and I found it surprising and very comforting that my mother-in-law ended up being someone who had very particular insight into my personal health struggles—more than any other person I knew. Her practical advice was always there. (“Go to the doctor; get that blood work done. Take a break!”) But her spiritual advice resounded with the years of experience she had in living it out. (“God’s way is perfect. Trust Him. Love Him with all your strength. Love and serve others with the energy you have. Know that God designed you and knows you, and He understands your limitations.”) She was a patient, gentle, and kind mother to me. Basically, if you take the typical “mother-in-law stereotype” and turn it inside-out to its complete opposite, that was her. And I will continue to learn from her as I listen to my husband, who has benefitted from her teaching and example even longer than I have. Lord willing, her influence will live on in our children.

She is the first one who would say that she is not perfect, and that it is only by God’s grace that these good things are possible. She has certainly been an example to me of the woman in Proverbs 31:

²⁶ She opens her mouth with wisdom,
    and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.
²⁷ She looks well to the ways of her household
    and does not eat the bread of idleness.
²⁸ Her children rise up and call her blessed;
    her husband also, and he praises her:
²⁹ “Many women have done excellently,
    but you surpass them all.”
³⁰ Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,
    but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
³¹ Give her of the fruit of her hands,
    and let her works praise her in the gates.

²⁶ 她开口就说出智慧的话；
她的舌头上充满慈爱的训诲。
²⁷ 她监管一切家务，
从不白吃闲饭。
²⁸ 她的儿女都起来称她是有福的，
她的丈夫也称赞她，说：
²⁹ “有才德的女子很多，
但你比她们更超卓。”
³⁰ 艳丽是虚假的，美容是虚浮的；
唯有敬畏耶和华的妇女，必得称赞。
³¹ 愿她享受自己手所作的成果；
愿她的工作在城门口使她受称赞。

These things are true of her, not because throughout her life she tried harder than anyone else to be a good person. Her physical and spiritual children rise up to call her blessed because of her passionate and enduring faith in God. God saved her through Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, and He changed her through His grace. He offers that grace to each of us. As we stand by Mom Talbert (or Purple Grandma as many lovingly call her), let’s praise God for His grace in her life, and let’s embrace that grace offered to us as well in Christ.

If you have a favorite story to tell of this godly woman, please share it in the comments below!

Posted By: desireetalbert · In: Growing in Grace