Honor Thy Mother

I am not a mother (in the sense that I have yet to bear children), but I look forward with hope to the day I will be granted this honor.

Mothers partner with their husbands and their God to create and bring forth life. After years of changing diapers, nursing sick ones, and walking floors to calm their cries, they spend more years making peanut butter sandwiches in the wee hours of the morning for school lunches. Then they sacrifice their sleep again as they wait for teens to come home from dates or parties. They pray their children through their educations, into their careers, and onward as they start their own families. And through all this, they nurture, love, and teach.

My own dear mother did all of this and more to raise her six children. I still marvel both that she could stand the smell of peanut butter at 7 am and at the hours she spent in the car, driving her children from place to place so they could develop their talents and pursue their interests. Even still, as a grandmother-of-a-dozen, she gives of her time to serve us and others, because it is part of her nature.

For all the gifts we are given by our mothers, I would suggest they deserve to be honored more than once a year. Motherhood is sacred service. It is a career from which a woman does not retire. One of the ten commandments is to honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land; considering what company it keeps, it is clear that this commandment was not given lightly.

And so I put forth this question to you… How do you honor your mother? Not just on Mother’s Day, but every day? I’ll admit – I usually don’t think to send her flowers, but I try to live the righteous principles she teaches me and model my life after her example of faithful Christian goodness. And probably most importantly, I try to remember to say thank you – regularly.