The first person she thinks about in the morning is not herself.  You may have been, at one time or another, the person she thought of when she awoke.  I know I have been.  My mama thrives on care.  It is what she made her profession.  It is why she can still say after 35 years that she enjoys her work.  It has always been more than work to her.  She cares. It is who she is.  

This year, like many other years, I have needed her incessantly.  This year, like many other years, others have needed her as well.  She balances.  She prioritizes. She leans on some underground stream of strength from which she is  able to continue to love on me.  She is honest, often truth seeking, and occasionally exhausted.  She does not pretend to be able to go forever. She is able to say no, but mostly wants to say yes.   

She has given her time, her money and her life to me.  She laid down her pride and did what was best for me.  She sacrificed much so that I could be whole, could flourish, could be healthy inside. She has gifted me over and over and over.

Her greatest and most influential gift to me has been her story.  Her truthful account of her life- inside and out.  Her tears as she told of her shortcomings, her failures, her brokenness.  Her hero tales, her inside jokes, her childhood fears and her history. She left no rock unturned.  I never was met with the heavy realization that my mother wasn't perfect.  She was always real, always human, always honest, always open. I was able to be real. I was able to be authentic. I was able to relate and to reflect on accomplishment, on relationships, on sin- Her stories, her truth and reality kept me from disaster more than once.  

It is not thankfulness that I feel.  It is the core of who I am reflected in her.  It is being able to be who God made me because the tree from which I came was not too shady nor too bare.  It was full of all experience, clean or unclean....all of it.

Somewhere in her history, many times, in fact, my mother encountered her Savior.  It was in the deep wooden benches of her back road church, under the baritone praise of a long-legged Daddy.  It was riding in cars with new dresses to the store.  It was riding bareback and picking daisies and playing with beagles.  It was in sewing machines and dances with red-headed sweethearts.  It was in wading through wild and being broken and used. It was in fix-er-up shacks and black curls.  It was in heartache and mistake and abuse and laughter and Christmases alone and together and wondering and waiting and seeking.  It was in prayer and gathered women.  It was in Chinese food and blue chairs and Friday nights and Fresca.  It was in broken hearts and sleepless nights and baby cries.  It was in long mountain walks and photographs.




I love her....and it never feels that I will ever be able to adequately help her understand that I have listened.  That I have tasted her honesty, her truth, her ability to see what I am thinking and not saying......I tell my story because she told hers when noone else would....I love her...and not for what she gives me, but for what she allowed me- freedom to be the me that God intended, freedom for that journey, and love along the way.