Memories
The tears have flowed today! I didn’t want them to, two years on and I wanted to remember my mother without tears but with smiles.
Mother’s Day is a day when we are supposed to say thank you to our Mothers. That is what it was designed for.
As one mother said, being as mother is not for the faint-hearted. You have to be strong, physically, emotionally and spiritually to survive motherhood and what you lack in one area, needs to be compensated for in the other two. I know that I wouldn’t have managed being a mother without the wisdom and support of my mother. Sadly, I’m not as good at supporting my own children as she was. While I thanked my mother many, many times while she was alive for being the wonderful person she was, I still wish that I could continue to have that opportunity but I can’t and so I have to be content with memories.
Memories has been a subject that has been given a great deal of time-play for me in the last few days. I have thought about memories that make me blush, how it fails us as we get older, how they are distorted with time and how sometimes they just pop up unannounced.
Memories are replays of events that have happened in the past and stored away to be brought out when something or someone opens the page of that particular event just like opening a photo album.
I’m sure that sometimes, God often opens those pages deliberately in order to challenge us about how we are behaving and to give us some understanding about our impact on others.
As I get older I’ve noticed that often my memory fails. I now have to write lists, not only for shopping but also “to do” lists for my day. If the lists aren’t written I get to the end of the day and find that I have achieved very little or what I have achieved has no resemblance to what I wanted done.
I was thinking about Paul, when he wrote to the Corinthians about seeing dimly in a mirror (1 Corinthians 13:12) and wondered if God has used memory issues to inspire what he was writing.
Memories are always seen through the circumstances in which actual events took place and the emotions at the time of recall. They are subjective things. Things that make you smile one day; make you cry the next.
So today is Mother’s Day 2016. This is only the second of the many years that I will not be able to talk to my mother on the telephone.
So what do I want today. Do I want time out, not really, I get plenty of that now that the children have all left home? Do I want to ring my mother, no not really, she is much happier where she is and does not need to hear my tears? Do I want lots of gifts, no, I have all the things I need and more? What I really want is to be is a forward looking mother, not a mother that keeps looking back!
This is why I didn’t want to cry today!
I want to be a very special mother!
A mother that looks forward to seeing her children make their own way in the world successfully. A mother that works at making the world a better place not only for her own children but for those kids that no longer have mothers to support them. A mother who definitely looks forward to one-day thanking God and her mother every day for eternity once I reach my final destination.
I know that day will come, because of the faithfulness of my mother. She (and my father) taught me about the love of Jesus and how He has a plan for my life. She also taught me that I am not here to be served but to serve, even if it is nothing more than praying for those in need. Mothers, like our children are only lent to us for a short time. At some point in our lives we have to let go and say goodbye for now, smile and carry on. This is the best way to say thank you to any mother, to honour them, is by living the best life that we can.
Yes, let’s thank all mothers, past, present and future, by looking forward, putting on our smiles and working towards a better world for every generation that follows us because one day we will be the ones departing and leaving behind lots of memories.