I had the audacity to make my parents a cute little card on my birthday some years back, using this photo, to thank them for having me. I wasn’t exclaiming that I was so wonderful, but seriously thanking them for raising me. The older I get the more I think of my parents on my birthday, especially my mom (for obvious reasons). My birthday is not all about me.
My mother was probably the greatest influencer in my life. She quietly invested in her children’s lives by loving us, reading to us, clothing and feeding us (delicious) meals, organizing us, teaching us what we needed to know, enabling us to stretch our wings, and most of all teaching us about Jesus’ love for us.
I know they waited awhile for me, as my sister was almost four years older than I, and then waited another 3-4 weeks for me to actually arrive (I had been due the 4th of July and came the 30th). I’ve always heard a bumpy truck ride helped to move me along. My grandparents came for the month of July to help my dad build our house. They finally left to go back home the day before I was born!
Mom didn’t have an easy life as a busy pastor’s wife, but I never heard her complain. Never. I also don’t think I was the easiest of their four kids to rear. The middle of three girls (with a baby brother), I was the one to march outside the lines. So that’s why I’m thinking especially of my mom on this another birthday. I miss her, but I see her everywhere—in myself and in our home, in the way I do things, and in her progeny. “Her children rise up and call her blessed.”
