Ode to Our Moms

We have been incredibly blessed by our mothers. Dan and I lived worlds apart growing up. I grew up on a farm where my Mom took me with her in the tractor to help Dad out by plowing. Dan grew up in the military. Both of our Moms made hard choices. Diana moved a LOT and kept such a wonderful warm home and a magical sense of normal for her family in all those different places. My Mom lived on a farm and it was our life. In the summers we all put in long hard hours but my Mom would then come home and prepare a meal for us and do laundry and somehow managed to keep the house clean.

Both Moms faced challenges I can only imagine. Both Moms taught us to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Both of our mothers showed us the self-sacrificing love that is so like the love of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Both put in lots of long hours of worry, work, and tons of laundry with very little thanks. And neither of them expected thanks for the hours of prayer, labor and sleepless nights.

Every year that I am a mother I appreciate the love of our mothers a little more. I see a little more clearly the path that they so lovingly and dedicatedly walked. I am blessed to walk the same road. It's tough. But it is the most wonderful kind of tired you will ever experience.

I am not sure I would like to compare myself as a mother to our own mothers. There is no comaparison. I am so thankful to have such faithful friends, prayer warriors, advice givers, encouragers, and lovers of my children in not just MY mother but my sweet Mother-in-Law as well. I have been doubly blessed. I am praying the same for my children.

I pray that the Lord will encourage me on this journey to never let good enough be enough. May I always love my children more than myself, and help me, Lord, not to resent their every minute of the day need of me. Rather allow me to embrace it and loose myself in it so that these precious blessings might find themselves in You. In reality I ask only to be the kind of mother that our Moms were for us!