A Tribute To My Mom

Dear Mom,

I read a post of Facebook the other day where a mom was telling her adult kids what she really wanted for Mother's Day.  In short: Time with them.  I agree.  Being a mom myself I feel the exact same way.  But since we're far apart and don't spend as much time together as we both would like as moms, I wanted to take a minute to tell you, and the world just a few of the reasons I'm so thankful that God made you my mom.

#1  Your songs.

Now that I'm a grown up and have spent years pursuing my own walk with the God of the Bible, I realize there are a lot of messages I swallowed growing up that weren't so Biblical.  Some things taught as truth were just misunderstood.  Some were mis-taught.  Enter grace.  And hymns.  No matter what I learned about God and life that wasn't so right growing up, what I learned right I heard in your singing.  When you sang the words, "I need thee every hour..."  you taught me dependence upon the grace found in Christ.  When you cried out in song around the house, "Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, help me stand."  You taught me to cry to God and not pout to myself.  When I heard you worship at bedtime, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me..."  You taught me to awe at the salvation found in Jesus.  Your singing planted truth in my soul mom.  And now it has sprouted and grown into it's very own tree, planted by the same streams of water out of which my soul sings with you, "And he walks with me, and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own.  And the joy we share as we tarry there.  None other, has ever known."



#2 Your brokenness

Mom, honestly I used to wish you weren't broken. I used to wish, with you, we had a neat, tidy, healthy family.  I wanted a yellow house with a picket fence, two happy healthy parents and siblings who got along too.  Who doesn't want that?  But brokenness has come upon us all.  Even those I thought had that picture perfect family.  And it's through the brokenness in your life that I have learned to see God's miraculous way of making beauty out of ashes.  I used to be angry with God for the brokenness I saw everywhere and in my own life.  But the beautiful masterpiece God paints by taking the very cracked up thoughts and emotions, bodies and relationships we all live with everyday and out of them painting a whole new Christ-imaging life makes the beauty of that Norman Rockwell life I had in my head look like a 5 year old's water color.  God has painted Christ-exalting majesty and glory out of your broken life mom.  Christ in you is beautiful!  Through you Christ has shown himself to me as the Great Physician who has come not for the well, but the sick, like me.  Through you, he has made me to know him as the great bearer of burdens.  Because you have turned to Him, time and time again, I have learned to see myself and others as broken people in desperate need of the love of Christ.



#3  Your creativity

Paper dolls cut out of any piece of cardboard or paper on hand.  Marbles and Jax.  Stories that should be written down and printed as captivating children's books.  Biscuits to die for.  Your interest in our lives and your creativity and handiwork drew us as children to you.  Your creative, happy, liveliness was Jesus in you causing the little children to come to him.  And he is still at work in you drawing your grandchildren.  God has given you the gift of touching the hearts of young children mom.  Your love of life and interest in investing in the young souls around you has forever changed the course of many lives for God's glory.



#4 Your diversity

In a small town where everyone was a shade of pale and most people spoke red-neck English, you were a wise woman with a world-wide awareness and a vision for honoring the diversity of God's people in every tongue, tribe and nation.  Before we could even speak, you were hanging cut out magazine images of babies with different skin-tones on the wall next to our crib.  When Cabbage-Patch dolls were all the rage, you bought your white, freckle-faced children black Cabbage-Patch dolls.  When people of darker pigment came into our our town and didn't speak much English, you welcomed them into our home and learned to make tortillas from scratch with them.  In a culture that was ignorant to it's xenophobia, you were planting the truth that in God's world there are peoples of all cultures, pigments and languages.  And that's a beautiful thing!


A Woman To Be Praised!

That's only four reasons out of many for why I thank God every day that he made you my mom!  I celebrate you mom.  I want to pass onto my children the gifts you've given me.  Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman like you mom, who is in awe of Christ Jesus our Lord, is worthy to be praised for generations to come!  May God bless the work of your hands mom!

I love you,

Your Lil' Toad