Our mother is an artist and a poetic soul. She savors springtime and blossoms pushing up through the mud. She clips branches of lilacs and fills the house with a heavy, sweet smell. She loves sunshine and warm airy days. She is sensitive and genteel and carries herself with dignity.
Mom taught us the finer things in life, the art of conversation, the courteousness of saying thank you.
She loves our family and knowing what is going on in everyone’s lives and being a part of them. Mom is kind and hospitable. She reaches out in her kindly way to initiate conversation and make those visiting feel right at home. Mom is an encourager. She is humble and unassuming, quick to praise others and hesitant to be praised.
She loves music, the uplifting lovely melodies, the lilting folk music, the sacred songs. She loves Christmas music, the sweet old, old carols from long ago, the sparkling snow dusted notes from white Christmases and winter wonderlands.
She enjoys artsy things and sweet flowery pictures of birds and buds, of nature, of skipping brooks and whirling snow. She enjoys nesting birds and homey things, things that speak of love and shelter and family, pleasant things.
Mom loves God and finds comfort in His Word. She desires to be more like Christ, to let her life be consecrated to His service, to take her hands and feet and let them be moved by impulses of His love.
When we were children and Mom would pray, she often began, “Dear Heavenly Father, we pause in this moment of this day to thank you…” We knew she was doing just that, stopping everything in her busy, often distracted life to refocus and lift her thoughts and ours above the hubub and remember the Giver of all good things.
Mom consistently carried the things that we heard and read in our Bible times into our routine life. The tendrils of her own relationship with Christ reached out into the little corners of our lives, reinforcing the deeper things, teaching us what following Christ meant.
Today, we rise up and call her blessed. We pause in the moment of this day to thank the Lord for blessing our family with the gift of Mom.
