“Mothers hold their children’s hands for a short while, but their hearts forever.”
It had been a hectic day. The end of a long week, near the end of what seemed like a very long winter. Spring had started, but then faltered as it retreated before one last storm front. The air was brisk and cold.
A man stopped at a flower shop to order some flowers to be wired to his mother who lived two hundred miles away.
As he got out of his car he noticed a young girl sitting on the curb sobbing.
He asked her what was wrong and she replied, "I wanted to buy a red rose for my mother. But I only have seventy-five cents, and a rose costs two dollars."
The man smiled and said, "Come on in with me. I'll buy you a rose."
He bought the little girl her rose and ordered his own mother's flowers.
As they were leaving he offered the girl a ride home.
She said, "Yes, please! You can take me to my mother."
She directed him to a cemetery, where she placed the rose on a freshly dug grave.
The man returned to the flower shop, canceled the wire order, picked up a bouquet and drove the two hundred miles to his mother's house.
“Whether it is for nine months, nine years or ninety-nine years, life, every life, every heartbeat began with a mom. ”
She fed you. She fed your heart. She fed your soul. She nourished, and nurtured. With a simple bar of soap she cleaned dirty hands, dirty knees and occasionally dirty mouths.
She helped you sound out words, and later was your sounding board for difficult problems. She taught you how to read and she taught you what the words meant. She read to you from the bible and she read with you the stories of Jesus.
She taught you to love God. To Love others. And to love yourself. She showed you the meaning of true love.
She was a mother, a room mom, the neighborhood mom, your friends second mom, a cheerleader, a coach, your biggest fan, a champion, a defender and your advocate. She baked cookies and eclairs. She applauded when you took your first steps and encouraged you to get up when you fell. She made green jello with fruit in it. She said, “you have to put the good stuff in before it sets.”
You know she was right. All the good that is in you, you know she put it there before you were set.
Yes she changed your diapers, but she also changed your life.
“I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.”
E.T. Sullivan penned these insightful words: “When God wants a great work done in the world or a great wrong righted, he goes about it in a very unusual way. He doesn’t stir up his earthquakes or send forth his thunderbolts. Instead, he has a helpless baby born, perhaps in a simple home out of some obscure mother. And then God puts the idea into the mother’s heart, and she puts it into the baby’s mind. And then God waits. The greatest forces in the world are not the earthquakes and the thunderbolts. The greatest forces in the world are babies.”
Happy Mothers Day to all the amazing mothers in your lives. Happy Mother’s Day Mom and to my sweet wife, the mother of my children, and to our wonderful daughters and daughter in law, the mothers of our grandchildren.