For the last few years – ever since I’ve been in college
really – I’ve had the inkling to write a Mother’s Day post. A letter full of ways in which, as an adult,
there are things I see and appreciate now that I never could as a child. Ways in which, looking back, I realize I was
by far one of the “lucky ones”. Growing
up we never had a lot of “stuff” but our house was always full of the things
which mattered. I wanted to acknowledge
that, and, let’s face it, the following was NEVER going to fit in a card and
Hallmark still hasn’t found quite the words to say it the way I want. I know Mother’s Day was a few weeks ago…I’ll
admit I had written the note and waited to post it and very much and quite
possibly forgot it was there to post.
But I also don’t believe moms should get relegated to a single Sunday of
the year. As if the other 51 Sundays and
364 days make a mom less important or of less worth to celebrate. My mom still matters to me post the calendar
square and so I thought I’d post it anyway.
So Mom, this one is for you…
Dear Mom,
Happy Mother’s Day!
I’m glad there is a day set aside in the calendar year to recognize
you. To celebrate the women who do so
much with very little thanks or appreciation or acknowledgment. Oh, granted, in this day and age, most women
could “choose” not to be moms if they so desired. And, let’s face it, we’ve discussed the fact
that there are moms that don’t deserve to be moms and really shouldn’t be… But you’re not one of those. Mother’s Day is for moms like you, moms that
need to be celebrated. You need to be
celebrated and thanked. I hope as the
years have progressed, I’ve done a better job of thanking you. Of remembering
the sacrifice you’ve made and continue to make for my siblings and me. But you’ll remember (because you’re my mom
and that’s what you do) that I turned 25 this year. You’ve been my mom for a quarter of a century…and
it is time I did something to acknowledge that…
So Mom, thank you.
Thank you for raising me to love Jesus. I recently articulated my faith journey
stating I was raised in a home with parents who loved Jesus and it showed. You taught me to have the love of God on my
lips and in my heart. You reinforced it with every van ride with Adventures in
Odyssey playing, every Psalty song tape, every children’s praise tune. Thank you for making Sunday School an
expectation and helping me memorize my memory verse every week. Thank you for
every dinner devotional you made us sit through. Thank you for praying with us before we went
to bed at night. For praying in front of
us. Thank you for establishing that matters of faith were a “life thing” and
not a “church thing”. For demonstrating
for us a faith both real and true. For
giving us an example of what loving Jesus was supposed to look like.
Thanks for being married…and staying married…to my dad. (Whom I also think is notably fantastic and
gets many of the kudos in this as well because you two were always a
partnership when it came to raising us).
Thank you for demonstrating for the five of us what commitment and
sacrifice and family are supposed to look like.
Thank you for telling us about and then demonstrating for us a marriage
which wasn’t two people going half way and meeting in the middle…but about two
people who went 100% and made Christ the center because a healthy marriage
takes three. Thank you for kissing in
front of us and allowing us to see that love and affection. Thank you for fighting in front of us. Because eventually we knew the fight would
resolve and we were taught that marriages could have disagreements without it
becoming a reason to separate. Thank you
sticking with it through thick and thin.
For respecting Dad and making sure we respected him as well. For showing us what it meant to be a
family…and that being a family meant something.
Thank you for being a “domesticated” mom. Perhaps that sounds silly coming from your
fiercely independent and prone-to-advocate-for-women’s-rights-in-most-settings
daughter. It probably even sounds quite
taboo in this day and age. But because
you and dad were always a partnership, I never saw it as “female” thing or even
necessarily a “mom” thing. (Nor did
you. Proven by a dad who showed he was
just as capable of cooking and cleaning.
And further evidenced by two brothers who enjoy cooking and baking and
are more than capable of making beds and washing dishes.) They were life things. It had nothing to do
with a gender role. Thank you for
allowing us in the kitchen from the time we were old enough to hold a spoon. For teaching us how to bake and giving us the
tools and freedom to experiment with making things. For teaching us how to read a recipe and to
use measuring cups. Thank you for
fretting when the house wasn’t “clean enough”…not because it wasn’t but because
it meant that you worked to keep the house clean on a normal basis and wanted
it to be livable and presentable. And thank you for forcing us to help make it
that way. For teaching us how to dust
and properly make a bed from scratch and mend clothes and put on a button. For doing laundry and washing dishes and
making sure we knew we did it, at least in partial, because we were called to
be good stewards of what we had and that included keeping things neat and clean
and not letting them fall to ruin.
Because of it, I insist on cleaning my bathroom once a week and I fold
my clothes before they have a chance to wrinkle and I do my dishes before
they’re growing science experiments and I can bake cookies and prepare a meal
like the best of them and I can fix a split seam and hem pants. You didn’t teach me to be a “woman” in these
ways; you taught me how to be an adult.
How to, eventually, take care of myself and my home and the people in my
care (though they may just be coworkers or friends). Your “domestic housewife” skills, allow me to
be even more independent...
Furthermore, thank you for those awful chores that we loved
to complain about and let you know you were ruining our lives with. Thank for assigning responsibility and
forcing us to act with it. For reminding
us that we were part of a family and that as such we were each in charge of
making sure the family functioned and that came with the pieces and parts…from
setting the table to taking out the garbage.
Thank you for “Operation Golden Touch” and Saturday mornings when we weren’t
allowed to watch TV or play outside until toys were put away and projects
completed…because life comes with obligations and expectations and hard work. Thank
you forcing me to spend hours picking beans in the garden and weeding the
flowerbeds… because everything requires work from somebody or something. We appreciate the things we have more when we
have to work for them. When we put the
effort towards them. Thank you too for
then helping us feel a sense of accomplishment for a task completed. For helping us feel a sense of pride for a
job well done. From such we were able to
learn that hard work came with its own reward…
Thank you for spanking me.
For grounding me. For taking away
privileges. For denying me dessert and
play time and friends over and television.
For setting boundaries. And for
letting us know when we crossed them.
For reminding us that there was a clear difference between what was
right and what was wrong and you and dad had little patience for the
latter. You raised us to know better and
to act on what we knew. You didn’t raise
us to fear you, but to honor you. And
though we failed (I mean, relatively often. We were kind of naughty. Although I
still maintain I got in the biggest trouble for issues which started in intense
curiosity. Like cutting open the screen
with the knife. I mean, aside from the
fact I lied about it… it was SO cool!), your expectations at home carried over
to the way we conducted ourselves at school and at friends’ houses and in
public. Thank you for so deliberately and specifically (and lets admit it,
sometimes through clenched teeth) reiterating “your choices are ‘yes mom’, ‘no
mom’, or ‘is it up for discussion, mom?’”
We knew that if we followed with “is it up for discussion?” the answer
was almost always “No. Try again.” But we also knew you were fair and that when
we approached things maturely without the argument and backtalk, life was up
for discussion quite often and you and dad would listen patiently to “our side
of the story”. As adults, perhaps more
so than ever before, we are able to see just how fairly you dealt with us. How many of our own mistakes you allowed us
to make. You taught us that our
decisions had consequences and sometimes punishments but you reminded us that
we were capable of more because those decisions were not who we were…
Thank you for never demanding that we brought home the
“A”. For never demanding a standard we
weren’t capable. Thank you for never making your acceptance or approval
contingent upon our accomplishments. But
thank you too for allowing us never to settle for anything less than our best
and making that your expectation. For
telling us that a “B” we worked really hard for was just as good and in some
ways much better than an effortless “A”.
For knowing what we were capable of and compelling us to strive for that
and being proud of us knowing we had given it what we had. Thank you for not comparing us to each other
when it came to things like school. For
never expecting me to really awesome at math just because Faith was or telling
Caleb that he should be an avid reader and good at English because I was or
that Amelia should be great with puzzles and science because Caleb was… Instead
you allowed us each to have our own strengths and celebrated our
differences. Along similar lines, thank
you for not being the mom (or the parents) to force us into sports or dance or
drama or music lessons or any other number of insane and inane
extracurriculars. Thank you for allowing
us a) to simply be kids and to b) choose what we were interested in and to
pursue those instead. Thank you for supporting us in our individual hobbies and
clubs and teams. For not forcing us to
stick with a second season of something we hated but for making us complete
whatever season we were in…to see a commitment through to the end. To give things a “fair shake”. To persevere. To not let our teammates down. To never give up or quit when something
didn’t go our way.
Thank you for every time you told the five of us to “fight
nice”…knowing we were going to have it out but that we still had a
responsibility to each other’s personhood and emotions. Thank you for making us hold hands on the
couch until we could be kind. Thank you
for making us apologize. Thank you for
reminding us that our siblings were our training ground for every annoying and
rude and terrible person we would ever meet.
That we couldn’t go around socking every person that ticked us off. Thank you for every time you told us about
your roommate in college who used your shampoo without asking and reminded us
that life at home could one day get very real.
Thank you for being thrifty.
For never buying me name brand clothes.
For making insane meals out of the most random items. For balancing a checkbook. For “making due with what we had”. You raised us to appreciate what we had. To thank God that our needs were met. To not expect life to be handed to us on
silver platter. For a large family on a
pastor’s salary, we sometimes didn’t get what we wanted but we were never
without the things we needed. You
reminded us that who we were wasn’t defined by the things we wore. That a higher cost didn’t mean higher
quality. And that it was possible and
essential to live within side one’s means.
We weren’t “cool” but we also weren’t spoiled. Our friends didn’t like us for our image and
we grew up learning to be both grateful and generous…
Thank you for acting out of hospitality. It’s got to be on your list of spiritual
gifts. And I have yet to bring home a
person who would disagree or tell you otherwise. Thank you for the way you make each one of
our friends (and shoot, your friends for that matter!) “feel at home”. Get to know them. Take care of them. Invest in them. Thank you for being “Mama K” to literally
dozens of young people scattered from here to the corners of several
states. For being another (and for a
couple of them, a primary…) mother figure to anyone who enters our doors. For embracing them as “one of your own” and
making them feel loved and supported in the same way you always did and
continue to do for each of us.
Thank you for teaching us to be caring and compassionate and
tenderhearted. Thank you for every
person who came to the house bleeding or bruised or having some rash developing
somewhere which you were always happy to nurse.
Thank you for letting us watch you care for the world around you out of
your gifts and graces. Thank you for
every random person who joined our crazy bunch for dinner or a Sunday meal
(probably a harder experience for them than us, looking back. Ha!).
Thank you for entertaining basic and sometimes actual strangers and
taking care of so-many of the “least of these”.
Thank for every time we watched you give food from our own cupboards to
someone who stopped at our house because they knew the pastor lived there. Thank you for giving away things we sometimes
thought we wanted (or decided we did once they were gone) to people who needed
it more. Thank you for demonstrating
Christ’s love in real ways. I don’t
think it’s any wonder that your four eldest (the exception being the one still
in high school, so he doesn’t yet count) have pursued careers and occupations
and degrees that deal directly with the care of people. You’ve demonstrated for us its supreme
importance…
Thank you for waking up to listen every time I had a bad
dream. For always making the time to
talk and to listen as a teen and adult.
Thank you for kissing us goodnight and wishing us a good morning. Thank you for taking care of me just as a
much as an adult as you did when I was a child because “just because I didn’t
live under your roof didn’t make you any less of my mom”. Thank you for advocating for dozens of
doctors appointments. Thank you for not
being willing to settle with a “nothing’s wrong” answer when I was first so
sick and pushing for solutions until they made discoveries. Dr. O can claim whatever she wants; it was your persistence (with some very ironic
help from Jesus) which eventually found my cancer. And it was you who accompanied me to every
appointment and transported me to every surgery. You have always been there for me. Every late night, tear-ridden, stressed-out
phone call. Every silly question. Every bumbling frustration. You’ve always made the time…
As I type and type I feel as if I could and should go on,
Mom. After 25 years – there is much to
be said. Much I don’t want to
forget. You have raised kids of
character and integrity. We’re hard workers
and invested and caring and kind. It is
fun for me, as an adult (because let’s face it, it probably never would have
happened when I was a kid!) to brag on my siblings. The lives that they live, the lives they
invest in, the lives they impact. The
real ways in which their faith is demonstrated through who they are. I hope you realize that those are clear
reflections on you and Dad. Some kids
are who they are despite their
parents. Some are in spite of their
parents. And the rest are, for good or
for bad, because of our parents. We are flawed and human and a quirky bunch
(the quirky definitely has your name written on it!), but we turned out
well. And we have you to thank. Thanks for being our mom. For being MY mom. And should someday I ever become a parent,
let alone of any merit, I’ll be able to look back at a letter such as this and
confidently say “I have my own mom to thank…”
I love you!
Anika
