Moms in My Life

Today being Mother's Day, I am overcome with emotions from several different fronts. I'm missing my own mother, appreciating my daughter's motherhood of two special granddaughters, recognizing the enormous sacrifice and love of all the women I have known in our family and church circle.

But taking it down to a personal level, as a caregiver, I'm reminded that motherhood doesn't end when a child is grown. We all require a little mothering as we get older. Just a listening ear and shoulder to cry on. Not all moms are as good at that as others, but it's something we need to keep practicing, especially when our  grown children no longer need our physical intervention as much as our emotional and moral support. (And conversely, we mothers need it too. That's why sisterhood was invented.)

Even Dean, who seems to be requiring more and more assistance with the tasks of life, is still in just as much need for someone who understands and appreciates him and his quirky ways, as he is with needing someone to help put his socks on.

As I contemplate our changing family roles, I am tending to embrace my role as caregiver/mother more on a day like today, Mother's Day. I can more easily find reason to celebrate my role, however it transforms itself with Dean over the next few years. I'm ready to be whatever he needs, because it continues to strengthen my relationship with him and with God. And what else is there?

my sister, mother, and I in 2005 (trip to Florida)

Lemon Meringue Pie

One of my Mother's Day gifts was a homemade lemon meringue pie, which I announced as something I would especially like. After two tries at making the meringue, however, we were almost ready to call it quits because the egg whites just were not cooperating at all to form the stiff white peaks they were supposed to. But I remembered that there were enough eggs from the dozen I had bought, which were from cage free hens and all natural, and I was positive they would make a difference. And sure enough, they made a beautiful meringue.

Beginnings are so important. Where those eggs came from, the environment the chickens lived in, and the food they ate, made all the difference in the quality of the eggs we needed for our cooking.

And this is the reason we honor our mothers today. They gave us the needed foundation for our success as adults. It's where we got our beginnings. As God requires that we recognize His role in our beginning by keeping the Sabbath--"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth," He also enjoins us to recognize our family beginnings by honoring our fathers and mothers.

Thank your mother...no matter what kind of meringue you turned out to be.