Mother’s Day….a son’s perspective.

It’s Mother’s Day again this year, the day we choose to set aside to celebrate the women in our life that chose motherhood, whether by natural birth, adoption or those that are mothers for a second time around raising their grandchildren.  Women that often sacrificing of their own personal dreams in order to raise and nurture another generation.  My heart floods with feelings of overwhelming gratitude, respect and love for everything my mother did for me throughout my life and the focus of this commentary.

My mom, Lena, is the most amazing woman that I know.  I am fortunate to be married to one (nice save eh) and I have met so many others in my life that I have admired as moms, but my mom is on the top of that list!  She was a hard working country girl that ended up working in town in her early teens to help her mother after the unfortunate passing of her father to cancer.  She had to help raise her younger siblings while her mother went out to work.  When she was finished high school, she went to work but still had the responsibilities at home limiting her own path to employment.  When she met my father and married she was working part time.   My mom made the choice to be a full-time stay-at-home mom when I arrived.  My dad was only employed part-time, seasonal in the agricultural industry, but always worked side jobs in between up until my forth sibling was born, so there certainly was a sacrifice for my mom not to work outside the home.  I realize that many women don’t have the choice not to work outside the home, my grandmother didn’t after my grandfather’s death, but it is still a choice that my mother made.  I am grateful to her for sacrificing her own goals for her children.  But did she really?

When I ask my mother about the sacrifice she made to set aside her own goals to raise 5 children, she always replies “You kids were my goal!”  For my mother, we children were her career choice and let me tell you, it was not an easy job!  Five children, a few years apart in age that invented the term A.D.H.D!  We grew up in a small, rural town on a gravel, dead-end street and had a fenced in yard.  We always thought that the fence was to protect us children from the world….in retrospect, I think the fence was to protect the world from a group of hyper active children!  My mom was and is a saint.  She always talked with us, not at us and displayed love and respect in ways that I have taken with me in my life as a pastor now.

My mother has wisdom beyond most professionals….was a nurse, a counselor, a cook, among other things and all before google!  She just knew stuff and how to talk with us about it.  She was calm….and let me tell you we put that to the test more often than those trained for combat in the military.  That calm was her reassurance that she wasn’t doing her job alone.  I learned my early reliance on God from my mother, who loved Him so.  She was the base of my faith-knowledge that was all about love and relationship.  My mom always found the time to make each of her children feel special in a way that you felt validated for who you were.  Selfless, man no one was more selfless than her.  There were many, many times she went without the things she needed not only wanted to see that her children were taken care of.  That is love.  She was our shelter, our safe spot and she model what she believed God was to her.  Today, I am grateful to have been able to call her my mom.  I love you more than you will ever know. xo

To all the women who have mentored, loved and nurtured the children in their care whether they were their own or adopted and in need of love, I send out my deepest love and respect to you on this Mother’s Day!