My mother is 81. I haven't spoken to her in 13 years--nor has she spoken to me or been there for me when I had surgery, when I learned my husband was cheating on me and spending us into extreme debt, when I got divorced and was left as a single parent to 6 kids still at home, when both my daughters were in surgery on the same day. Etc. She'll see me at the grocery store and turn her nose up and walk past me. Yet the family story is that I am not talking to her, that this is all one-sided. Early on, I invited her to a couple of parties for kids' events & she arrived and 'ate my meat and drank my wine' and ignored me the whole time. As a result, I quit inviting her.
I have just learned she has tongue cancer. My first thought was, if I were a writer I couldn't come up with more perfect karma. My mother TALKS. Talking is what she does. She trash talks other people. She has spent my 50+ years trash-talking my grandmother, my father's entire side of the family, the way her mother was unfair to her 65 years ago. She has trash-talked me to many other people since I was 4 or 5 (I believe because she was covering up inappropriate behavior on my father's part, making sure no on believed me) and there are people who will always think badly of me as a result, not based on who I am but on who they think I am as a result of her lies about me. She has trash-talked me literally to my high-school friends when I was in high school and walked out of the room, to my new mother-in-law the first time she met her (and I saw the permanent change that day in how my MIL treated me), to my siblings, to her friends, to people in my/our church.
She has spent hours and hours talking at me about how angry she is with the world, how much she dislikes other people. And never in those hours of her talking at me has she ever shown the slightest interest in who I am or what I think...yet she goes on to tell other people what I really think, or why I really did something, despite what I actually told her.
I give this much detail to say: she has spent her life demonstrating the Biblical principles about the power of the tongue and the evil use of the tongue, using the tongue to hurt others, to turn people against each other, to tear people down, to drive wedges between people, to break down relationships, to damage other people.
My first thought on finding she cancer of the tongue, was: KARMA. If I were an author this is how I would have written the story of someone who has continually gossipped and turned people against each other with lies and gossip.
But I also need to ask myself: What is the CHRISTIAN response to learning (from a third party because your parents won't tell you themselves) that your mother has cancer? My personal response is: Thank God maybe her gossiping and turning people against each other is finally coming to an end.
What should be the Christian response? I don't necessarily think it's evil or wrong or unloving to see the strong correlation between how she has used her TONGUE for 7 decades to divide people and having tongue cancer. But I also seek the Christian response on my own part.