I will never forget the emotions that surrounded the opening of a certain cardboard box that had just been delivered to our tiny apartment in the late eighties. It seemed massive to my young childhood eyes…as if I opened a wardrobe of sorts that would whisk me to a different land.

My mom ordered that box for us. I don’t even know how she afforded it considering the effort it took to keep our little family afloat.

This season was just one of my parents’ multiple separations until they officially divorced about six years later. When my mother first arrived in the United States to join my father as he worked on his degrees — and she started hers — I don’t think she expected to spend most of her time alone. She’s often told me how hard it was to come from Nigerian culture where new mothers were surrounded with intentional care in their first year postpartum, to landing in Alabama, not knowing what to do with the newborn she’d just delivered from her body and without support.

In those early years through the birth of my siblings, my mom was in a place of heightened desperation. So she surrounded us with a small church community. She brought us with her to prayer meetings where the voices of other Nigerian immigrants bellowed and echoed around us. At those gatherings, unrelated aunties stroked my hair as they beseeched the Lord God Almighty on behalf of themselves and so many others.

Even though this was a time of strain and struggle and rejection, I look back on those years with fondness because that is where my faith solidified. Jesus wasn’t just a story or a Sunday school lesson on the flannel board (my favorite!). He was real and tangible in my house because He was all we had to cling to.

My mom walked out more heartache than I can imagine but I watched how she continued to cling to the Lord. I heard her prayers, saw the creases in her Bible, and felt her protection in the decisions she made (and didn’t make) to give us her best.

Some may grow up in families with massive inheritances and financial stability. Even though that was not the case for my family, I feel as if I was richer than most because my mom gave us an inheritance that will not fade or decay. She not only taught us about the Lord, but she showed us that He was trustworthy through her actions and experience. In her darkest moments, the light of her dependency on Christ still burst through, beckoning me to know God for myself too.

One of the most fascinating stories to me is the one of Naomi and Ruth. I adore reading about the redemption and the love that unfolded. But the part that encourages me the most is that in the middle of their heartache and grief, Ruth decided that she wanted Naomi’s God to be her God. She wanted the Lord that was with Naomi to be with her too (Ruth 1:16-17).

We are familiar with Ruth’s words of devotion but perhaps we sometimes forget the circumstances that formed them. Ruth didn’t say these words out of the overflow of comfortable, victorious times. They were declared amid grief, uncertainty, and inevitable transition. Somehow Naomi’s determination to cling to the hand of the Lord — even when she felt He had turned it against her — impacted Ruth deeply.

You may feel like your past journey or current one is so filled with struggle that it would be hard for anyone to wrestle out some sort of redemption. But you have no idea the type of legacy you leave from those hard places. Because it’s not about what you feel like you can or can’t do, but about the One you stubbornly cling to, even if it’s just grasping a tiny thread of the tassel hanging from His robe.

I don’t think my mom ever felt like she had much to give us in those seasons but she, in fact, gave us everything. Everything. She offered us, and still does, glimpses of what it means to live our lives not anchored on circumstances, but on the Rock who will never fail.

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