My mom, she lives far away… at least three flights to get
from here to there. Well, I live
far away too. Each of us now
living thousands of miles away (in different directions) from the three bedroom
house at the end of the cul-de-sac where she and dad raised me and my three
sisters and our dogs and cat and bird and horse and rabbits and goldfish. Once mom accidentally killed our little
goldfish… he was seven years old.
Who knew goldfish could live to be seven? …or that they didn’t like to
have real plants in their tank for
that matter? Well, he would have
died eventually, and we got over it.
No mom is perfect, but if killing a goldfish is the biggest mistake I
can ever remember my mother making… I’d say she comes pretty darn close to that
mark of perfection.
We learned a lot from our mom, my sisters and I. We learned to cook and bake and vacuum
and dust and pull weeds and pick boysenberries. We learned math and spelling and penmanship and
science. We learned to sew and cross-stitch and make quilts. We learned to go to
church each Sunday and to get involved and to take care of each other. We learned to penny-pinch and to clip
coupons and visit the buck-a-bag sale on Wednesdays and half-off Hostess sales
when money was tight. We learned
to respect our elders and to close the toilet lid (especially if grandma was
coming over), and not to put our elbows on the table.
But three things that we have learned from the woman we are
privileged to call “mom” can never be measured or taken for granted.
1. Mom taught us, by example, morning after morning after early
morning: Don’t ever let anything get between you and your time alone with the
Lord. Every day without fail she
would sit in that brown armchair with her Bible and her Daily Bread on her lap. She tuned out the world around her so
she could tune into Jesus. Now
that I’m grown and living as a missionary and needing Jesus’ presence more than
ever, I realize more and more each day how priceless this gift, this habit of
seeking Christ in the morning, has been to me. Thank you, mom, for your example.
2. The second gift that I cannot begin to place a price tag
on in this world of rampant divorce rates and broken families: My mom showed us
what it means to be a Proverbs 31 wife.
My mom loves my dad. She
trusts him and respects him and honors him with her words, her actions, her
love. When he felt called to be a
missionary to a church far away from anyone they knew and loved, she supported
him fully, though it meant being taken far from her parents, children and now
grandchildren. She has always
helped dad in his business endeavors, from personalized children’s books to
filling toner cartridges to now running a lunch café. My mom is an excellent wife. I never saw them fight. I never had to wonder if mom and dad would always be together. And now as I’m finishing up my sixth
month as a wife myself, I have hopes and dreams of being the kind of wife to my
husband that my mom is to my dad.
Thanks mom for your faithfulness to my dad.
3. My mom trusts God.
Through thick and thin, hard times and good times she has always placed
her faith in Him, and He has never let her down. When dad was laid off and we didn’t know where the next
paycheck would come from… she never took her eyes off of her Savior. When God led me to move to one of the
most dangerous cities in the western hemisphere, she could have held onto her
baby and refused to let me go, but rather she wrapped me in the arms of my
Protector and sent me, trusting, on my way. Then when He led them both to make the big move to unknown
territory, far away from comfortable California and family and friends and into
a new land where the lava was ugly and the "vog" was hard to get used to and
forging new friendships was even harder.
But she continued to trust that God’s will was best. And He has continued to show Himself
true. And when grandpa passed away
and she mourned from afar and used airline miles to be there for her mom and
siblings, she trusted that his Father had carried him home. And even now as the future is uncertain
(it always is), she continues with unrelenting trust in a faithful Guide. And I look at mom now and I look at my
bank account and my budget and it seems the numbers are going in the wrong
direction, but I can’t help but trust that my Father who has started a good
work in us will be faithful to complete it. I look at mom’s unwavering trust and I know deep down that
everything is going to be okay.
There are still a lot of unanswered questions and still a lot of room
for growth, but I am choosing to place my full trust in the One who has always
provided and will always provide.
And I thank my mom for showing me by example what it means to truly
believe.
A “thanks mom for everything” just doesn’t encompass how
indebted I am to you for all you have shown me, taught me, lived out in front
of me. My life is not the same
thanks to you. I have been blessed
beyond measure and I hope to one day live out your legacy in the lives of my
own children. I love you dearly
and I don’t tell you often enough.
Mom, you are my hero.
