Tribute to My Mother

I just ordered a bouquet of pink tulips to be delivered to my mother as soon as she arrives from visiting her mother.

I feel sad for my mother today because she doesn't have any of her children with her on this special day. My sister is in Alburquerque with her family. I'm stuck in Tulsa. My brother is in Iraq, doing his duty as a soldier.

Not only that, but my mother is well aware that this will be her mother's last mother's day.

What does one do without a mother?

I hope not to need an answer to that question until I am fifty -sixty -or dead. I mean, I know it is unnatural for a mother to have to bury a child, but in all reality, I think it is crippling for a child to have to bury a mother. I don't want to have to experience what my mother is experiencing at this moment.

This is the first time I haven't been with my mother for Mother's Day. The first Mother's Day I celebrated with her, I was close to two months old. The last Mother's Day I celebrated with her was two days before my college graduation. How I wish I could do what I did throughout college...tell my mother that I wouldn't make it for Mother's Day, then have Stephen pick me up from the airport so we could surprise her with Las Mananitas. She fell for it every year.

It is a blessing to have a mother. Not everyone is lucky in this, which is sad. Even though my mother is not perfect, I wouldn't trade her for anyone else's mother. My mother is my hero, my inspiration, my role model. She is the woman I aspire to be someday when it becomes my turn to be a mother to children.

She is a blessing that has been given to me, a wonderful gift from God that I know I will have to return someday...not too soon, though. My mother is strong, faithful, optimistic, caring, giving, loving, sacrificing, loyal, full of life, enterprising, intelligent, hard working. She has had a hard life and yet she continues to move head on because of her children.

My mother is my strong pillar of faith. She is the wind beneath my wings, the muse to my creativity.

My mother is, well, a window into God's own heart.

I understand and bask in God's love because I understand and bask in my mother's love. I understand and embrace God's sacrifice because I understand and embrace the sacrifices my mother has made for me. I understand and cling to God's grace because of my mother's unconditional love. I understand, know and believe God because of my mother.

My mother has done what she was created to do -she is an image-bearer of God, she is a warrior for God, her children, her family and her friends. She has brought forth worshipers...my sister, my brother and myself.

I once read a quote on how C.S. Lewis saw his wife after her death...as a sword in the hand of God. I now understand what he meant...my mother is a lamp, a light, a window and a sword.

She shows me the true living, beating heart of God.