Happy Mother’s Day, Heroines
One night this week Ray and I went into a Kohl’s near our hotel. I’m pretty sure I saw a couple of men shopping for Mother’s Day. I can’t think of another reason that one man would be at the check-out three days before Mother’s Day, paying for only one item — a collage picture frame.
I also think that is why a man stood in ladies’ wear holding a ladies’ shirt. He looked like he needed some encouragement, so, as I walked by, I complimented the shirt. He said, “I hope she likes it.” I do hope she likes little weiner dogs, because the shirt was covered with them! I love to see guys being sweet, especially those guys you see at the grocery checkout with flowers in their hands.Â
I am especially blessed on Mother’s Day these days, because my children encourage me; I get to honor my own mother and Bethany, Mary Evelyn, and Audra, the mothers of my grandchildren. I also get to honor you.
Honoring mothers is an ancient idea from the Creator of the universe. The responsibility we have to honor our mothers dates from the time of the Exodus. It is so important to God that He made it one of the Ten Commandments.
Mothers have many traits worthy of honor. One is their amazing perseverance. Mothers get up every day and do dozens of necessary things. The next day they get up and do them  again. They keep doing them week after week and year after year.
My mother is good at persevering. She spent weeks at our house last year, learning to speak again after a stroke. While there, she finished a quilt she had begun twenty years before. One day she got discouraged and we had a chat about her quilt. In her struggling speech, she said, “I want to finish.”
I watched Mother work on that quilt at different times for twenty years. I’ve seen her have times when the work was going beautifully and I’ve seen her rip out stitches and do them over again. She started that quilt in her early sixties, and last year, when she was in her early eighties, she wanted to finish it. She did and it is beautiful.
When a woman makes a quilt, she starts with many pieces and puts them together to make a whole quilt. Each of the moments you have with your children are pieces of a quilt. You work hard on that quilt. You persevere day after day and year after year.
You are not working alone. You are not the master designer of your quilt. You are just a helper, a faithful helper who keeps sticking with it moment by moment, day by day. I’m so proud of you.
You can honor your own mother in many ways on Sunday, and I hope you will do that in tangible ways. However, the best way to honor our mothers and the best way to be a woman that our children will want to honor is by the way we live our lives.
Let your father and your mother be glad,
And let her rejoice who gave birth to you.
Proverbs 23:25