A Love Letter to My Mom

Dear Mom,

 Thank you for loving me. 

You have cared for me in ways I can never fully appreciate or understand. 

But I thank you.

Thank you for all the practical ways you loved.

For all the home-cooked meals

the homemade birthday cakes

the dresses you sewed

the clean and organized home

how you added beauty and a feminine touch

in needle point 

and putting up our pictures and 

artwork
in decorating for the holidays
I thank you.

But more than these things

for caring

for asking

 for listening

for teaching

for being there

for caring for me when I was sick

tired, confused

I will never forget you

and I hope by God's grace to be like you

you never wrote a blog
you never wrote a book
you only worked as a nurse when we were in school
you were home when we were home
you never went to Africa
you never had a "ministry"

you spent many a day changing diapers
cleaning house
cooking food
playing with toddlers
what some might view as insignificant
and a waste of your talents
but not me

your input in my life can never be measured
your example to me of love,
practical service
and time invested are a
powerful example that will stay with me
the rest of my life
and will hopefully
pass on through me to my children as well.

as I try to understand what it means to be a wife,
a mother,
a woman
I thank you.

I love you, Mom.

post script:

 I mean no disrespect for all the wonderful women who write, speak, lead, travel, have careers. Of course, women can do all kinds of amazing and wonderful things. 

I only mean to say that I see great significance in my mom's life in the daily, seemingly, mundane activities of motherhood. What I remember and appreciate her for, was her willingness to do this in love for us. 

 A home is about the relationships of love we have with one another not whether anything is homemade or not.  Anytime I put things (even my desire for home to be a certain way) over people, I end up losing both. 

Again, this poem is just to say how much I appreciate my mom and the things she did in love. She did not view those things as a waste or her talent or her time or her potential. 

13 If I speak in the tongues^[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,^[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3