Mother’s Day is a day that evokes a lot of emotion for me.  I grew up down south.  I don’t know if it is still the same today, but most of the women would wear a corsage to honor their mother’s.  The color had meaning.  A red flower meant your mother was living.  A white one meant she lived on in your heart.  My dad always had a corsage for me and one for my mom every Mother’s Day.

To make my mom feel special, after church we usually took her to a restaurant.  Yummy! 🙂  A treat.  My parents would both call their moms in the afternoon.  Sometimes my dad would have my brother and me clean up parts of the house.  All in all, I think my mom knew we appreciated her.

I’m grateful for my mother.

She taught me who the Lord is.

She taught me how to pray.

She stayed home with me and my brother… I never had to spend a day in daycare.  She was WITH us.

My parents sacrificed to send us to Christian school.

They took us on trips and allowed us to see historical places and the wondrous diversity God has created.

My mother took care of her mother.  She set an example of having fun with her sisters.

She took care of me when, as a teenager, I became very ill with Environmental Illness and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity.

She has a servant’s heart.

I got married up north.  I don’t recall anyone wearing flowers to church, but often they send a flower or flowering plant home with the mothers in the congregation.  So very thoughtful, don’t you think?

I carried on the tradition of calling my mom for Mother’s Day.  That is, until my folks stopped talking to me.

For several years, Mother’s Day was a day of deep grieving.  A reminder of how things were not how they were meant to be.  My poor husband loves celebrating holidays, and I just wished we could skip them.  Slowly though, God brought me through a transition… though I still remember my mother and say an extra special prayer for her, I learned to celebrate the day for what I do have, and I have a lot.

This morning I got up to find a vase of flowers and a note from my husband… 6 pink carnations for our 6 baby girls, 2 orange carnations for our 2 boys, and babies breath for the promise of what is yet to come.

The red one is from church. 🙂

God has given me such a precious family to rejoice in.  I am very grateful for each and every one of them.

My oldest daughter was not with us today.  Nineteen going on twenty, and down in the twin cities with friends… makes me sad, and yet happy at the same time.  When I hopped into my van seat to go to church this morning, I found the sweetest card she had made and left for me.  It made me cry.  She talked about me loving her when she’s easy, and loving her when she’s not easy… but regardless she said she knows I love her, and that no matter what, she knows I always will.  That was the tear jerker.  I have intentionally told my children that I will love them no matter what, because feeling abandoned by my own parents, it became a priority to me that they know my love for them is unconditional.

Whether they walk in the Spirit or not.

Whether I agree with their choices or not.

Because I will always be their mother, and I will love them,“NO MATTER WHAT.”