Dear Mom,
It is strange not to celebrate with you this Mother's Day, but I'm glad you and Daddy have this opportunity to travel and explore a new part of our nation.
The author Ann Voskamp has unveiled an initiative this year called The 1,000 Moms Project. Her family is offering an opportunity for readers to thank their mothers publicly on Facebook or their blogs. For every reader who participates, they will make a donation to a needy mother and child in Haiti; if 1,000 mothers are thanked, the Voskamps will fund an entire Child Survival Center for a year. You have never been able to refuse help to someone in need, so this project will make you smile that big smile, I know.
The thing is, I've been procrastinating all week, undecided about what to write. "The greatest gift or the biggest sacrifice," the description said. How to choose from a life full of gifts and sacrifices? Nothing I could write seemed good enough. Now tomorrow's Mother's Day, and there's a letter to write, so I'll just talk things out like I used to brainstorm research papers for school while you prepared supper.
Thanks, Mom. Thank you for all the time you poured into listening to those ideas and pretending to be interested in the topic du jour. You also proofread more than one draft of those same papers, as I recall. Thank you for talking through your own lessons learned when you started going to Bible Study Fellowship; that was really my first exposure to the idea of reading the Scriptures outside of church and Sunday school.
Thanks for the thousands of miles and hundreds of hours you drove to ballet studios and piano lessons and for your commitment to get me the best training you could find because you believed, whether I did or not, that God had given talent that needed to be cultivated. (I owe you more than one fill-up and oil change!)
Thanks for all the sleep you lost sewing impossible dress patterns for the first day of school or birthday or Christmas or Easter or confirmation or graduation or choir. I loved wearing the things you made and always felt prettier in those dresses. Well, maybe not the choir ones. Or the Dixie Strutters baton twirling costumes with the sequins. That was no fault of yours. You were following the same orders the other moms had.
Thank you for all the sick days you spent with me, all the trips to doctors and pharmacies, all the library books and homework fetched to keep me busy, all the plans canceled because one of us needed you at home. Thank you for not making fun of me when I fainted or nearly did because of needles and other people's gory medical tales. Thank you for understanding because you had once been the same way.
Thank you for all the arms wrapped around, sessions in the rocker, tears wiped away. Thank you for letting me cry and never telling me to stop because it wasn't worth crying over.
Thank you (and Daddy, too!) for all your support in innumerable ways through my circuitous education and to Bangkok and back. Thanks for the open door and warm welcome always. Thank you for loving and supporting my husband just as staunchly as you do me.
Thanks, Mom. Thank you for four decades of faithful love. I love you too!
Love always,
your Sonshine
P.S. Thank You, Lord, for the Mom You gave me (#5941).
It's not too late for you to participate, too. The linky list is still open all day Monday, May 14, 2012, and the morning of the 15th. Follow the linked button below to read more about how thanking your own mother on Facebook or in a blog can bless a needy family in Haiti:
To reach the page directly where you may link up a blog post, click here:
http://www.aholyexperience.com/2012/05/the-habit-of-a-mother-who-changes-the-world/
Also sharing this with the Gratitude Community:
