How my Jewish Mother found out I am Christian

Cherish your mom on Mother's Day

One of the most difficult days in my relationship with my mother happened nearly 25 years ago. It was the day she found out I am a Christian. Let me make that more clear: I didn’t tell her; she found out. Nobody in my family told her; she found out. Actually nobody at all told her. She. Found. Out. That’s the kind of woman she was, and the kind of mother I had. She did things on her own.

I have written about my conversion experience several times on this site. In late spring of 1999, I accepted Christ into my heart, in my own living room. I lived in Warner Robins, Georgia at the time, and my mother lived seven hours away in Fort Myers, Florida; we lived on the same exit numbers on I-75, in different states. I accepted Christ on June 5, 1999 and was baptized that same month.

Before making my decision, I (my memory is hazy, I might have just called) flew up to New Hampshire to talk to my brothers. I called my sister in Chicago. While my mother was with my sister in Chicago, helping her battle with cancer (she beat it!), I secretly flew to Fort Myers and spoke with my step-father, her loving husband, Danny. They all told me one thing:

Don’t tell your mother. She will not take it well. They actually didn’t use such calm words.

“It will kill her.”

“She will kill you.”

“She will have a heart attack and die on the spot.”

You get the idea. So I didn’t tell her. Everyone else knew, and nobody dared tell her. She was suspicious. I usually visited several times a year, and in 1999, I hadn’t visited at all. When she spoke with me on the phone, she could tell something was different, but I didn’t let on. She suspected I had been talking to the rest of the family, and there was some dark secret we were all withholding from her.

Finally, she browbeat me and deployed the mother’s secret weapon to get me to visit. Guilt. I agreed to come down. It was Yom Kippur weekend, which occurred on Sunday, September 19. We were having a pleasant visit.

That Sunday morning, I knew I had to go to church. With me, that’s never optional. One of my “life verses” that guide me is Psalm 150:6, “everything that has breath praise the Lord.” If I am alive and not contagiously sick—if I can get out of bed—I will go to church on Sunday morning, wherever I am, whatever I’m doing. I have always stuck to that, and on that particular Sunday, early in my faith walk, I went.

I found a small Assembly of God church down the road from my mother’s place, that had an early service at 8:00 a.m. I got up early, quietly snuck out of the house, and went to church. I was back by 9 or 9:30 a.m. My mother was waiting for me.

See, she must have heard me leave, or something woke her up. Instead of just waiting for me, she decided to take the matter into her own hands. She got in her car and started driving around town, checking parking lots. She found my car in the lot at the church down the road. I hadn’t thought to conceal it, or take a cab, or walk (not that any of those things were viable options). I suppose I could have just not gone, but that also didn’t really work for me.

She saw my car in the church parking lot, and she could have burst into the church and made a scene. She could have waited in the parking lot and made a scene. Instead, she went home and fumed until I got there.

That weekend, I found out how the Holy Spirit can protect my mind from complete collapse. I didn’t want her to find out this way, but it was exactly how I ended up engineering things. She was going to have to find out one way or another. I endured the yelling, the hurt—her hurt—and the disappointment. I went to Kol Nidre (Yom Kippur) service with my mother and step-father, and she glared at me.

I had become the thing a Jewish mother most fears: a Christian.

But it didn’t kill her. In fact, over the next few years, we agreed not to talk about religion or politics. We still loved each other, and I still went to her house for the Jewish holidays.

Her discovery might have been the best way for her to find out. There was no trying to convince: it was done. And we got past it.

A year or so later, my mother began her long journey into Alzheimer’s, which eventually took her life in 2008, sixteen days after Danny passed away from cancer. With just days to live, Danny told me he never lost his faith in Christ, even after converting to Judaism (and getting circumcised) in his 50s out of devotion to my mother. He kept the Jewish holidays as well as any Jewish man. But when he died, he was embraced in Jesus’ arms.

I don’t know my mother’s fate, as her mind was given over to dementia. But I do know she loved me. She always loved me.

I cherish my mother Rose. She was a good mother, a good Jew, and she had an incredibly strong heart. There’s no better thought than thinking of her as I head to church on Mother’s Day.