One of my mother’s favorite sayings is “Give me my flowers while I’m still living.” Meaning, don’t celebrate me and talk about how much you love me after I’m gone, tell me now while I can appreciate it. I used to think that was such a hard thing to say until my father passed away a few years ago and I wrote a post about how much I loved him and would miss him. Seriously, it’s so much easier to tell people you love them while they’re still with you and it’s better for the soul. So, Mom, here are your flowers…
My sisters and I were raised in church. In fact, we used to joke that when we were released from the hospital our first stop was the church. Which really isn’t that far from the truth since we had to pass by the church to get to our apartment. Anyway, suffice it to say, we were in church a lot. During my early years, I thought everyone was in church 5 to 6 days out of the week, it wasn’t until my teen years that I realized we were, um, different. That was also when I began to resent all the time spent sitting on those hard pews.
I wanted to be like the other kids in school ~ go to dances, attend parties, hang out at the clubs, listen to Michael Jackson or Prince, anything but gospel, but Mom wouldn’t let us. Nope, we had to have ourselves dressed and ready for that 2 hour drive to church every Sunday morning and a couple of times during the week. Yes, our church was 2 hours away from our house. Do you know how hard it was to do homework in a moving vehicle?
As I grew older, I strayed from the path that she had set me on, I even tested pushed jumped way over the boundaries when I lived at home. How she survived me, I’ll never know! But now that I’m older and have children of my own, I understand what she was doing and I truly appreciate it.
Mom, if you’re reading this, and I know you are because all moms read their childrens’ blogs don’t they, I want to thank you for the nights you spent listening to me as I recited the books of the Bible for Sunday school. Had to earn that penny candy from Elder Osbourn. I want to thank you for the hours that you spent praying that I would survive whatever craziness I had gotten myself into that day. Remember the celebratory phone call on my 21st birthday because everyone was soooo happy/surprised that I made it? But, most of all, I just want to thank you for helping me to learn the meaning of God’s love.
