Let's Hear It for the Moms

You didn’t forget, did you???

Mother’s Day is this Sunday.

I would argue that your own personal birthday should be celebrated as Mother’s Day seeing as how she did all the work so that you could even be here. That would make every day Mother’s Day for someone.

I can say that, too, because I’m not a mother, so I’m not campaigning for more Mother’s Day benefits. I really think moms should be honored every day.

I’m triply blessed in the mom department.

I’ve got My Daniel’s mother, my mother-in-law, who accepted me immediately as her own, loves me to a fault, remembers my likes and dislikes, has made an effort to get to know me over the years, and implores her son to treat me like gold (which he does). God gave me a gift in my mother-in-law who is a miracle and an angel. I love her!

I’ve got a step-mother. She and her family also accepted me immediately as one of them, she endured my snarky early-teen years during which I was not so kind and very much a know-it-all, she displays a tender and kind heart, she’s thoughtful and sensitive and perceptive. I’m so thankful God gifted me a step-mother more like Snow White than Cinderella’s evil stand-in. I love her!

Then, of course, I’ve got my mom. My mom mom. The one who labored 36 hours to birth me. The one whose DNA I share. The one, as a daughter, I am most likely to reflect in life. The one to whom I am connected in a way impossible to replicate in any other relationship.

But the maternal relationship is based on much more than DNA.

Although everyone has one of these kinds of mom moms, mother/child relationships are like fingerprints or snowflakes. Each is unique.

I know that I have a special one.

She’s worked harder than anyone I know to be a good mother, especially to me, her not-so-daughterly daughter.

For one reason or the other, we haven’t always clicked. We haven’t always been bosom buddies, like some mother/daughter teams I’ve observed. We don’t share the same taste in clothes. She probably couldn’t name my favorite food or TV show (or I hers). I don’t call her up every day just to relay what I had for dinner or that I got a pair of shoes on sale or when I’m feeling PMSy. If there was a version of the newlywed game for mothers and daughters, we would lose and in a big way.

And yet, I’d call us friends. Not only friends, but good friends.

I am 100% certain she loves me. I am aware of and grateful for the forgiveness she’s extended to me through the years. She has been, without a doubt, my number one fan as I aspire to be a writer. She allows me to be myself and express myself with no boundaries or judgments. I can tell her anything, but I can also keep it to myself if I so choose and she does not pry.

She prays for me and with me.

We share some great memories together that will be forever and only between us, like an inside joke between besties.

Our relationship has been a work in progress. I am thankful she never gave up on me. I am thankful she never threw in the towel on herself. Our survival is a testament to God’s goodness. It’s like that pot of clay, so fragile to begin with, that has been fired in the kiln producing the most beautiful, most valuable and most cherished masterpiece.

I love you, mom! Happy Mother’s Day!

Now, all of you Dry Ground readers, go love on your moms. If she’s not present to love on, like my wonderful grandmoms who are with the Lord, thank God for them and reminisce some good memories.

Have a blessed weekend!

(photos by photobucket.com)