030: My Mom

March 17, 2010
1 Samuel 1-2

Today is my Mom’s birthday. She never had to wear green on St. Patrick’s day while we kids were growing up, because she said she was exempt from the risk of being pinched. I think she made that rule up…

Something she did not make up, however, was her genuine love for my family. My Mom is a great mom. She chose to stay home and put her time and energy and talent into helping my Dad run the family business and homeschooling their children. On top of organizing and planning our education, keeping the books for the farm, fielding phone calls at all hours of the day and night for the business, she also made it a priority to have home cooked meals every evening and a consistent expectation of family participation in the nightly feeding. When I started school at the community college at the age of 16, Mom would pack my lunch every day and have it ready for when I was walking out the door (yes, I know, that’s being a bit spoiled… I claim it’s because she never had the chance to do it during all our early elementary years…).

Mom prioritized our attendance at church – of course, my Dad was a huge part of this, but it was Mom you had to convince if you wanted to beg out sick. Mom also made scripture memory a part of our education, and modeled opening the Bible and reading it to apply it to our lives.

When Mom says she’ll do something, she can be counted on to do it – whether that is dropping off library books, or picking you up from soccer practice. Sometimes she runs late, because she has so much on her plate that it’s hard for her to keep up with everything in a timely manner, and because whenever she sees someone she knows, she makes a point of talking to them and catching up. That used to annoy me when I was little: standing by the fence after soccer practice, waiting for what seemed like FOREVER for Mom to come… but now I find myself doing the same thing. I hug people in the grocery store, I wave people down in the parking lot, and I visit with the librarian or the sales clerk at the shoe store.

Hannah clearly loved her son, Samuel, but she was a great mother, because she gave him up for the Lord. I can’t imagine going through that – waiting and praying and hoping for a child, finally receiving a miracle, and then being willing to leave him behind in a strange city with an old, fat priest. My Mom hasn’t been quite in the same sandals as Hannah, but she has had to give up a lot where her kids are concerned. Each of her older daughters have chosen to pursue college education a long, long way away from home. I know it was – and is – hard for her to let us go and hand us over to the Lord, but she’s done it. She’s passed the truest test of motherhood, I think, which is to selflessly pour into your child and then let that go.

I don’t know if I will ever be a Mom, but I hope that if I do, the Lord gives me the strength and courage to live up to the admirable characteristics of motherhood I’ve seen all my life – not only in the Bible, but also in my own Mother. Happy birthday, Mom!