My mom...

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.