She Just Doesn't Get It

I sit in the immaculate house with white carpeting, and a well kept garden. The gardeners come every Friday. The same day the house cleaner does.

We have another conversation in the livingroom where Jim grew up. FOX News runs in the background and the expensive collectables on all the shelves stare down at me.

I listen to her talk about all her annoying neighbors and the petty business between them all.
“Those people.”
"Yucky _______.”
It's not just the neighbors. The longer our visit stretches, I begin to realize that she has such easy criticism of all the others who get in her way, don't agree with her, or are not the same as us.

And then she talks glowingly about the people of prestige or wealth that she's met or is working with in her volunteer work.

No wonder she asks after dinner tonight,
"So you figure you've another 15 years until you retire? Don't you think you’ll ever move back here for work?”

What I hear between the lines in this and other comments over the past 8 weeks give me the sense that she feels her son’s wasted his career working, even serving, people who don't matter (to her).

I may not be being fair to read so much into it, but I do have a degree of discernment and I get the vibe that he's not living up to her expectations. Actually he's a big disappointment. He's not wealthy or well known. But there still may still be time for him if he gets back to USA; preferrably in Fullerton, CA, and gives himself more of a chance to be recognized for the bright, no, brilliant person that he is. Trouble is, I'm sure if he were the Mayor of Fullerton, or the Pastor of the largest church in town, there would still be other more powerful or influential or visible positions he could have to give her status among the people she believes are important.

It must be so hard for her to have her only son living on the other side of the world doing something that in her heart of hearts she doesn't feel is really worthwhile. She not only is robbed of her family being nearby (which isn't uncommon even if Jim had another career), but she's robbed of the prestige of having her son be "important" in the eyes of others who are "important." I pray that there is still time for her to grow a bigger heart and a bigger view of the world and our purpose in it. I pray for her to begin to grasp God's great love and compassion for ALL peoples, and that God's spirit would infect her heart with that same kind of love.