10 on the 10th!

Since my mom was the one to remind me that today was the 10^th AND since her birthday is 2 weeks from today (I won’t tell you how old she is, but she was born in a year that ends in zero, which makes it easy to remember. And the first number starts with an "f".) here are 10 things I learned from my Mom!

1. “Be ye kind, one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you. Too-too, toodly-doo, Ephesians 4:32.” This is the first thing I remember learning from her--probably because she had to sing sang it so often to me when I needed to hear it.

2. Reading is amazingly fun! She read to me, read her own books in front of me, labeled everything in the house, bought me books--basically made me a life-long lover-of-books.

3. “Make new friends, but keep the old; one is silver and the other’s gold.”

4. Harmonize. One of my fondest memories is the 5 of us singing “Amazing Grace” in 4-part harmony driving down the interstate. Or “Rhinestone Cowboy.” Or the dooby-doo song. (Your love is lifting me higher)

5. Be your husband’s biggest fan. Laugh at his jokes, no matter how often you’ve heard them. Never criticize him in public. Don’t keep secrets from him. Follow him wherever he goes.

6. Be your kids’ biggest fan. She always used to say, “If my kids aren’t perfect, they’ll never know it.”

7. Make your bed every day. Even if the rest of the house is a mess, it gives a sense of order to the room.

8. There are 2 kinds of moms. One kind, when her daughter comes home in tears, says, "Honey, lets walk/job/run around the block and talk about it." The other kind, when her daughter comes home in tears, says, "Honey, have a cookie and let's talk about it." Now a lot of my favorite people are walk/jog/run, healthy-food-eaters, and I admire them so much. And like them, too. But, um...my mom and me...
we're cookie moms.

9. Every place has a beauty of its own. When I delight in the sun sparkling on the snow, tiny grass flowers, uniquely-shaped rocks, or colorful leaves, I’m just following her example. It obviously doesn’t come naturally, because she loves to tell the story of how when I was 4 or 5 and we were moving from Florida to Virginia, she was exclaiming over the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and said, “Kids, LOOK--isn’t it beautiful?!” I popped my head up from the back seat, looked out the window, and said, “All I see is a bunch of trees.”

10. Cling to God and follow Him no matter what happens. She was just 61 years old when my dad died, and her world was shattered. But I never saw her blame God or get mad at God--in fact, she praised Him through her tears at his funeral. In the months following, she expressed a feeling of lost-ness. Since her kids were grown and the one who had been her life for 42 years was gone, what was she supposed to do with her life? Well, she put 2 Cor. 1:3-4 (Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.) into action. She found other women who were going through the same things, and gathered them together to comfort each other, minister to each other, laugh and love and keep-on-keeping-on together. Then she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. She could have just given up, dropped out of everything, and just sat around feeling sorry for herself. But instead, she studied up on it (and tried to get her heads-in-the-sand, if-I-don’t-think-about-it-it-isn’t-there kids to study up on it, too), and kept right on serving and growing and being involved.

She is, without a doubt, my hero. I want to be like her when I grow up.