Happy Mother's Day!!!

God made mothers, beautiful, tired, dependent on Him, with humble hearts, a listening ear, a loving hand, a firm hand, sometimes harsh words, repentant hearts, forgiving hearts, messy days, laundry overflows, and sinks too, dirt on the floors, but a smile as she watches her children. 

God made mothers, and through Him He has redeemed us, and yes, through the mess we are beautiful once again. 

God Made a Mother 

(by Ann Voskamp)

God looking down on the Farmer loving His land and God needed someone to love the least and the little, into real whole people, and He knew that to love is to suffer so God made a mother.

That God had made technicians and programmers and supervisors and salesmen and God had said –

I need someone to get up at midnight and scoop the most fragile of humanity close to her warmth and rock though she can hardly stand and nourish though she’s mostly sleep-starved and change the diaper and the sheets and the leaked on, leaked through, and leaked down clothes though she’ll have to change them in the morning and next week and that won’t change for years.

So God made a Mother.

That God had said I need somebody with a strong heart.

Strong enough for toddler tantrums and teenage testing, yet broken enough to fall on her knees and pray, pray, pray.

Someone who knows that in every hard place is exactly where you extend grace, who looks a hopeful child in the eye and says yes, even though she knows every yes means a mess but this is how you bless, who has the courage to keep letting go because she’s holding on to Me.

So God made a mother.

God said I need somebody who can shape a soul and find shoes on Sunday mornings and get grass stains out of Levis.

And make dinner out of nothing and do it again 79, 678 times, and keep kids off the road and out of the toilet and in clean underwear and mainly alive though she’s mainly losing her mind and will put in an 80 hour week by Wednesday night and just do one more load of laundry.

And one more sink of crusted burnt pots.

And keep on going another eighty hours because raising generations matters and weaving families matters and tying heart strings matters and these people here matter.

So God made a mother…

It had to be somebody who could comb back pigtails and tie up skates just-right tight.

Who could pretend she remembered algebra and how to get home from here and that really, she was just fine, that it must just be the silly onions.

Somebody who would run for the catch, jump on a trampoline and play one fierce game of soccer and not give a thought to all those labors and her weak pelvic floor. Somebody who’d stay up late with a science project that never ends, who’d get up early for the game in the rain, somebody who’d wave at the door until the taillights were out of sight and still be smiling brave.

So God made a mother.

It had to be somebody willing to keep loving when it made no sense because that’s what love does.

Somebody who knew that patience is a willingness to suffer.

That joy is always possible because there is always, always something to be thankful for.

And that life is not an emergency but a gift — so just. slow. down. There are children at play here and we don’t want anyone to get hurt and the hurry makes us hurt.

Somebody willing to feed and lead, lay down her life and pick up her cross, give of her time because they have her heart. Someone who knows that we all blow it — and what matters is what we then do after.

Someone who could humble herself into the tender sorry that covers a multitude of sins.

And who’d bow her head at night over the girl asleep with the doll in the crook of her arm — and thank her Father for this hidden life that’s the turning gear for the whole spinning world.

So God made a mother.

And when the Farmer rolled over in sleep, there was this deep settling in — I could feel it — of not getting out of here, but of the grace that we *get* to be here.

That there was soil to till and numbed, hard places to break up, and there were seeds to be planted in the dark and the hope.

And grace to be cultivated everywhere.

That it was same down every back road and every side street and we aren’t very different, the Farmer and the mother and all-the-faithful-that-God-made-everywhere.

All of us people known to just Farmer on.

(Ann Voskamp)

Happy Mother's Day to my Mother!!!

How are you celebrating your Mother's Day?

What did you do for your mother?

In His Grace,

Jody