This past Sunday we honored one of the most important people in our life...our mother! It is a day that we go out to dinner with them, call them if they live far away and if they are no longer with us we remember. It was also a very hard day for some people who were spending their first "Mother's Day" without their mother and for those who have never been able to bear children.For any woman who has not given birth to a child, but has helped a child in any way Mother's Day is also for them. The true definition of a mother is not just someone who gives birth, but rather a woman who has nurtured, cared for, wiped the tears and held a child...whether they gave birth to them or not.
Mother's Day can also be a tough time for anyone who has been estranged from their mother. It could have been a disagreement or a misunderstanding, but as I tell anyone who has gone through that...use Mother's Day as a day of reconnecting. Don't ever let things go and then when your mother is gone it is too late and you are left with a pain that can never heal.
As I age I become more and more thankful for my own mother and everything she has done in my life. I know for her Mother's Day was difficult because she is torn between the joy of having me and the pain of missing my brother who died in 1994. When I called her on Mother's Day and told her I loved her, I could hear the joy in her voice when she said, "I love you too, son."
Many years ago...more than I would like to admit I sang the following song in church...it says it all:
"M" is for the million things she gave me,
"O" means only that she's growing old,
"T" is for the tears she shed to save me,
"H" is for her heart of purest gold;
"E" is for her eyes, with love-light shining,
"R: means right, and right she'll always be,
Put them all together, the spell "MOTHER,"
A word that means the world to me.
