My Mother…Reflections on Mother’s Day

My mother has had over three dozen children. She gave birth to two, but giving birth isn’t really what makes one a mother, is it?

It’s the hard stuff. The stuff my mother has done over half her life, with little accolades and with no earthly payment. The mother-stuff.

And the most important of her jobs? BEING THERE. Being available….the heart of what it means to serve.

She never thought of being anywhere else. She was a wife and mother, and she was needed. Still is. And she is still there…available. Serving. That’s my mother.

My mother and I are hardly anything alike. I actually inherited far more of my father’s qualities, which made my mother’s life more…challenging, and I’ll leave it at that.

I wish so much to be more like my mother–more sacrificial, more in tune to needs around me, more willing to place my needs and wants behind those of my family.

Yes, my mother is amazing.

She’d rather be in the kitchen cleaning up the dishes than talking politics around the table. She’d rather serve the food than mingle with the guests. And regardless of what she’d rather be doing, she does what needs doing because that’s what  mothers do.

My dad is strong, wise and capable. And yet he is only half a man without my mother. She completes him because she serves him. She completes our family because she serves us.

There will be a gaping hole in our lives when my mother isn’t in it.

I’m so grateful to have had a mother available for me, willing to lose her life every day.

I rise up and call her blessed while it is Today.