One week before Mother’s Day, I found myself visiting Grandmother Kim at a nursing home. Among the elderly residents sitting in wheelchairs, minds drifting, passing the slow hours in a haze, one grandmother suddenly called out in a bright, clear voice: “Happy Mother’s Day!” She waved from her wheelchair with the most guileless smile — her expression and the gentle flutter of her hand so pure and childlike, she reminded me of a little girl waving to a neighbor’s mother. Caught off guard, I waved back: “Happy Mother’s Day to you too!”

Rising in the elevator, I fell briefly into a sweet illusion — as though I were on my way to visit my own mother. Then I stepped into Grandmother Kim’s room, and my eyes flew open.

One entire wall of the room was covered — floor to ceiling — in drawings. Elementary school drawings, sent by grandchildren and great-grandchildren, pinned side by side like artwork on a classroom wall.

“My goodness! This is heaven!” I exclaimed.

Grandmother Kim smiled gently, her eyes growing moist. “When sleep won’t come, when I miss the children terribly, or when something stirs and unsettles me deep inside — I quiet myself by painting them, one by one.”

What was astonishing was this: those pictures — born out of sleeplessness and longing, out of tears and loneliness and restless nights — were filled with birdsong. Birds of every kind perched on branches, singing. Wild roses bloomed in full color, their fragrance seeming to fill the room. Crystal-clear seas teemed with fish and turtles of every variety, and children played above on boats with anchors raised and sails free. There was a portrait of Jesus robed in splendor, a golden crown upon His head. A farmer walked his ox to the field, a little dog trotting cheerfully behind. This grandmother, who had not stepped outside in years due to her failing health, had a room more alive, more vivid, and more suffused with peaceful joy than the world outside her window. It was not resignation. It was transcendence. It was not the defeat of a woman — it was the portrait of a woman who had risen above.

Grandmother Kim was approaching her eightieth year. She had lost her husband early and raised her children alone, and she took quiet, unshakeable pride in the fact that her son and daughter-in-law were making meaningful contributions to this society. Not long ago she had longed desperately to return home — to the house where her grandchildren lived. But now she seemed to want for nothing in this world, to envy nothing, to reach for nothing more.

Her hearing had dimmed, so the sounds of the outside world rarely reached her. The language barrier meant there was no one nearby with whom she could easily converse. And yet through her paintings she had filtered out every regret, every fear, every loneliness and sorrow — and what remained was a soul in quiet, luminous communion with the Lord, inhabiting a world rich with the abundance of all of nature. This was not a woman who had given up. This was a woman who had been lifted up.

It is not easy to trace the course of a woman’s life — it flows like a stream, leaving little visible mark. For women of generations past, life was a rough wilderness path cut through a patriarchal world that could rightly be called a history of human suffering. If a woman was beautiful, her beauty itself became the cause of persecution at the hands of the society and customs that surrounded her. If she bore children, she bore with them a particular kind of pain and anguish. If she could not conceive, there were eras in which she was denied recognition even as a full human being — forced to endure humiliation upon humiliation in silence. She was denied access to learning simply because she was a woman. She was expected, by virtue of being a woman, to absorb every demand for sacrifice without complaint. At times her physical vulnerability left her powerless before violence. She was made a political offering. In one devastating moment, husbands and sons she had loved more than her own life were taken to the battlefield, and she was left to stand alone.

And yet — nameless, unheralded, and seemingly powerless — these women burned with a singular and steadfast love for their husbands and children, pouring out their entire lives in devotion. Through their living and through their confessions of faith, the great roads of history on this earth were opened, again and again. Climbing and descending the steep paths of life, they did not lose their abundance in poverty and want. They did not lose their laughter in suffering and pain. They did not grow idle in exhaustion and weakness. They wore their hands and feet down to nothing in generous, ceaseless giving — and wherever those hands reached, flowers bloomed, fruit ripened, and something new was created.

Sarah. Miriam. Ruth and Naomi. Hannah. Esther. Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist. Mary, mother of Jesus Christ. Martha and Mary. Mary Magdalene. Salome, mother of James and John. Susanna. Helen Keller. Ryu Gwan-Sun. Kim Hwal-lan.

And the countless women — nameless, unsung — who spent their entire lives as workers of prayer, unseen and uncelebrated.

These beautiful names are still weaving a beautiful fabric into the history of this earth today.

Proverbs 31 declares: “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised. Honor her for all that her hands have done, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.”

To all the women of this world — Happy Mother’s Day.

— Wanhee Yoon, May 8, 1995