Happy Mother's Day to my Mom –

I love you, mamala!  I love you bunches.  I love you because you first loved me and gave a lot of your life for me (not as much as Jesus, of course, but a lot).

There are so many things about you I wish I had gotten:

• your jawline and facial features…can you leave those to me in your will?
• your ability to love church people, and churchy people even when and especially when they didn't deserve it.
• Your refusal to accept offense and let it live in your heart.  You are, above all, the most forgiving person I have ever met.
• your sense of joy at simple things, like a bird on the fence or a butterfly in your garden
• your compassion and mercy and how you always, without fail, believe the best about people, even when the evidence says otherwise
• You are guileless.  You are absolutely without guile.

But then are things I got from you I wish I hadn't:

• fear that there won't be enough money for steak.  I laugh as I write that even now – remembering all the times I watched you struggling to balance the budget, telling me, "There isn't going to be steak for awhile."  And though we ate very well at every single meal, thank-you very much, I kept waiting for the night we'd come around the table to…nothing.  It never happened, but I have a really strong love of steak meals, which I think may have come from that.
• your poor eyesight and EEE-wide feet
• your penchant for inventing your own set of cuss words like "oh, crap-a-dap!"  When I now say, "Oh, blast!"  Or "boogers!"  People ask, "Why don't you just go ahead and cuss?"  To which I reply, "Oh-I am!"

But I am so glad that I got these things and I learned this stuff from you, mom:

• the first 2 words I ever knew how to spell:  Bible, from the song, "The B-I-B-L-E," and salvation from the song, "Oh You Can't Get to Heaven without S-A-L-V-A-T-I-O-N"
• my first taste of longing for heaven when I was like 3 or 4
• country music, my dark secret is that I do love it
• good family photos, the ones you've given me and my desire to collect and create more
• lots and lots and lots of family photos – if one is good, 342 (of the same event!!) is better
• how to be my kids' biggest fan (you are thoroughly enthralled by every single one of your children, honestly and truly head-over-heels-enthralled)
• that a good letter, written by hand and sent in the mail, is a treasure from your heart to the recipient
• your example as a wife
• God is all, trust Him

The transition in relationship from the mom who raised me to the mom who is the woman I most admire and trust above all in the world came when I opened the card you tucked into my hand just before I boarded a plane in November of 1978, after coming home to tell you the hardest thing I ever had to tell you and I read this message: "I want you to know, your hurts and your troubles are my own."  I hold that thought in my heart.  It has en-couraged (literally put courage in to) me many, many days of my life since then.

I love you, mamala!  Happy, blessed Mother's Day to you, the best of them all!…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  Write and mail more letters to my mommy.