Mother's Day

THANK YOU MOM!

Kudos and yips to mothers through-out the known and unknown universe. Where would mankind be without you?

I particularly praise my mother . She is now 83 and not in the best of health. In fact she nearly died in January of this year but God has seen fit to bring her back and give our family more time to know, talk to and love her.

I am her only son and she administered more punishment to me in the child years than my 4 sisters combined. While she has worried about that for decades; the reality is I received less than 1/2 the punishment I really deserved. I was a brat and she simply tried to direct me towards wisdom and maturity. Now that was a challenging task.

But, despite the spankings and time-outs, I always knew my Mother loved me. If I wanted to talk, she wanted to listen. She dedicated herself to preparing healthy food for her family. Sometimes the experiments in healthy eating did not always pan out ( see the spaghetti and liver-balls fiasco) but her heart desired that we would be healthy and have long lives.

She had respect for her children. No, she didn't equate us with adults and she did insist we treat her with respect but she never acted like we were ignorant morons (which of course we all were at times). She let us grow into ourselves and was patient with the outcome.

Finally, she was and is the most devout of mothers. She has a staunch faith in Jesus Christ and she made it her goal to act and live by that faith. The person one saw at church was the person one saw at home. There was no difference, there was no hypocrisy. For her faith she has been mightily blessed.

My mother and my, very healthy, father have been married for 63 years or so. They've had a great marriage. The family attributes a whole lot of that to my mother (yes Dad, you contributed too but Mom, well she was the glue that held things together).

So today I drink a coffee toast to my mother - . May she enjoy her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren until she is graduated from this imperfect and painful life to the perfect and joyful life with her mother, father and siblings in the presence of the Loving and Living God.