May 14, 2012

• Moms

  I am pasting something I read on the internet for Mother’s day, because it said it better than I could.

  But I still had my own thoughts.

  The internet wasn’t working most of yesterday, so I am posting today.

  But I had enough time to call my mom.

  I went to the beautiful lake to think, and the trail was all muddy.

  But I got to walk through barefoot.

  The area is so poor with their mud houses and flies and no sewer system.

  But there is one beautiful family with seven girls that have stolen my heart, and I told their mother so.

  There was a bar blasting music while I tried to write something inspirational.

  But I saw the baby chicks run to their mother.

  The water is too poluted to swim in.

  But it is still beautiful to look at.

  Happy Mother’s day mom. All the previous and concluding words are for you. Happy Mother’s day Anna, Karianne, Becky, Karine, Lindsay–my bestest friends who have turned into these miraculous mom-creatures. Happy Mother’s day Mrs.Wood, Aunt Carol, Kristen, and Susan who live the life that I look at and say “Wow, to be a mom, that would be a great adventure!”

  

  Here are some better words, found at: http://www.aholyexperience.com/2012/05/what-every-mother-has-to-know-before-mothers-day/. I summed it up for you:

  Everything beautiful always begins with a willingness to suffer. Just ask any mother. You made double batches and you made beds and you made more of heaven on earth and a mother can do that with just two hands. I saw how you folded yours. A wise mother knows what powerful men can forget — that the way to move heaven and earth isn’t with a strong arm but with a bowed head. I saw how you learned to pray. Us kids were helpful that way. We stayed out too late at Gilley’s Pit and you stayed in knots too long and we put you down and somehow you put up with us. And we were wild and you showed us how grace can be wilder still. How much of you did you lose to make all of us? You still kept the vow to love when all the starriness was lost and you’ll never know how I sorry I am and how glorious you are.

  How many windows and lamps and dishes and gizmos did we break and how many times does a mother’s heart break to fix a world and I heard you cry sometimes behind the hollow panel door. And mothers, they never stop believing in the miracle of metamorphosis. Because believing in the miracle of metamorphosis is the sum total of a mother’s job. The theological term for that is faith.
  To have faith that the baby in arms will become the toddler toilet trained before 18, that the cocky juvenile hipster with the big attitude will become the concerned citizen with a baby on the hip and a big heart on the sleeve, and that kid who can never find his shoes or matching socks or math homework will be able to find a girlfriend, job and Jesus. It’s always the mothers, preachers and prophets who doggedly believed that leopards can lose spots and grace and angels can make pigs fly.

  Mothers were made to have faith. I don’t want to imagine if you hadn’t. Mothers give up much and never give up. Thank you. Mothers never stop being with child. You always make a space for me within you. Thank you. Mothers do hard things when the kids are hard: The parent must always self-parent first, self-preach before child-teach — because who can bring peace unless they’ve held their own peace?

  Thank you for brushing yourself off and the tears back and always opening the hollow panel door again. Mothers can be more courageous than entire military squadrons. A mother’s labor and delivery never ends and for years she has to remember to just take a deep breath. Whole battles can be won by one breath and a prayer at a time. The real stars are always so small and so large.  You lit my whole life. So how could I let the sun set today without thanking you —  for my beginning and your endurance, and for all the thousand ways you shaped me, and for being a one in a million because you were mine, and my today is in part because of all of your faithful yesterdays.

   

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