Perhaps there is no greater influence on any person's life than the one wielded by their mother. My mother was the oldest of 5 children. Her mother was sick a lot, and as a result, the keeping of the house and care of the younger siblings often fell to my mother when she was very young. When my mother was 20 years old, her mother died. Mother's youngest sister was only 7 at the time. She became not only big sister, but a mother figure to all of her younger siblings. There was a lot of drama and difficulties with my mother's father - he apparently had left his wife at the time of her death, and was seeing another woman. He married this other woman shortly thereafter. Years later, he desired and sought to repair the relationship with his children, and my mother was ready and willing to forgive him. He caused great pain in the lives of his children, but she loved him deeply, and I was always amazed at her great ability to forgive and forget.
Mother and Daddy married when my mother was only 18 years old. After a few years of marriage, they wanted to start a family, but had difficulties doing that. Finally, at the age of 25, my brother was born. I followed 2 years later. She was 100% dedicated to my brother and myself, and involved herself completely in our lives. She was Brownie leader, PTA president, and room mother extraordinaire.
I caused my mother many, many days of worry. When I was 6 months old, the doctor discovered I had been born with congenital dislocation of my left hip. Basically, I was born without a joint. This required that I be placed in a cast that went from my waist down to my toes, with an opening in the bottom so that my diaper could be changed. I was in this cast for 9 months. As a mother myself, I know this had to have been a daily struggle for my mother, but I've never heard her complain about it. My health issues didn't end there - by the time I was 13 years old, I had endured a strange episode of low platelets, which they initially (but wrongly) feared was leukemia, 2 eye surgeries, 2 hand surgeries, and a bout in the hospital with a kinked intestine. Not to mention all of the normal childhood diseases. My poor mother! From all of that, I remember that she was always there. She spent many nights in the hospital with me, and made sure that I was well cared for.
Mother sacrificed as all mother's do. I always had the best she could give, and I always knew I was loved. She made sure we were ready and early to every worship service, and supported my dad in seeing that God always came first in our home.
My mother is the cleanest person I've ever known in my life. There was a period of time in my life when cleanliness was just not that important to me. Hence, we had some conflict over that! She always won, though, and I'm glad now that she did.
I cannot even begin to list everything my mother has taught me. From her, I learned how to live. I learned that at my very core, the most important relationship I can ever have is with God. I learned that forgiveness, while not always easy, is the most godly attitude we can have. My mother taught me the basic things of how to keep a house, but more importantly, she taught me how to make a house a home. From her I learned how to love and nurture my own children.
Mother is now getting older, and her age is beginning to take its toll. A few months ago, I took her to lunch one day. She couldn't finish her meal, and asked for a take-out box. When it arrived, she tried in vain to close the lid - she couldn't manipulate the "latch" to get it to seal. I took it from her, and did it for her - and as I did, I thought about how she used to do those kinds of things for me, and now the roles were beginning to reverse. That's never an easy thing, but that's the natural progression of life. I'm thankful for my mother, and I hope that my life always reflects the best of what I learned from her.
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