The Best Things You Can Give Children Next To Good Habits Are Good Memories

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

I just wanted you to know how much I love you! I don't have all of my ducks in a row or chickens in the pot to be able to show you in tangible ways, nor the organizational skills/time to really show you how I've been blessed by you again and again, so the least I can do is tell you. :)

Thankyou for all the time you spent praying and doing and being for us. Of course there is no way for a child to understand how much a parent gives of him/herself every day. And no matter how much a child might try to understand, the limits of experience hold them back. Sounds like a picture of God and his children, huh? Thankful, but not completely understanding the depth of love for his creation.

Now that I am a mother as well, facing the joy, the worries, the excitement, the pride, the anger and frustration, the forgiveness and love, I understand more of what goes into a nurturing character and a nurturing character. And I'm thankful for the example that you've given. None of us could possibly achieve a perfection in this, but, Mom, I love knowing and feeling a deep respect and joy coming from you simply because of my being. What a special feeling that I want my boys to have...to know that they are loved just for who they are, whether there are flaws in their character or places where they don't measure up to a pre-set standard. Whether they make a place in history or make a difference in a couple of people's day to day life.

Mom, you are special and I know that you've made all of our lives special, too. I am grateful for the things you shielded me from, pushed me toward, supported me through, praised me for and taught me with.

Thanks for letting me get grass stains and play in the gutters, climb trees and lose coats and shoes. Thanks for bringing my trumpet when I'd leave it on the city bus. Thanks for having a party when I invited guests (what was I, four?). Thanks for making ruffly doll dresses with matching doll blankets and doll underwear. Thanks for flower door-knobs and library book stacks and wonderful birthday parties. Thanks for taking pictures and letting me use the hot glue gun when I was five. Thanks for the popsicle sticks and the use of your sewing machine to make mattresses, bed spreads, and bunk beds for my little tiny dolls. Thanks for taking me to gymnastics and tap dance and piano lessons and soccer and swimming and pioneer girls and Awana and camps and volleyball and basketball and track and drama practices and choir concerts and bells concerts and band concerts and Ensemble concerts and youthgroup and youth group events. Thanks for typing some of my papers and staying up really late in 1986 to finish a project that I had not understood. Thanks for calling my teacher to straighten out a mix-up I'd had with magazine sales that I was supposed to be in charge of, also, 1986-not a great year! :) Thanks for encouraging me through my college hunt, my Major hunt, and all of my relationship ups and downs.

Thanks, mom for encouraging me to be who I am.

Thank you for taking time for me.

Most of all, thank you for praying for me.

Thank you for allowing me to be an individual... a shoe-losing, key-losing, kid-loving, Jesus-loving, extremely organized in a few things, extremely disorganized in a few others. An individual who sometimes is outgoing and sometimes not, who is sometimes competitive and sometimes could not care less. An individual who loves things clean and organized but just can't keep them that way, due to the fact that I am probably working on about 5 other projects at the same time (Oooh... look at the shiny, sparkly item in the distance...). Yes, thank you for the graciousness of growing an individual and raising an individual and loving that individual through all the weather of these 35 years.

I love you, Mom!

"...for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. And let us not be weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.
Galations 6:7,9




(As a slight disclaimer, I had to take the quote marks and the commas out of the title, even though it bothered me greatly to do so, or it wouldn't publish. It's the little idiosyncracies that make us all special, isn't it! :) )