Birthday Profile-My Mom

Today, my mom was born, and I lay aside my gloomy reflections for a while to pay a tribute to her. This is my attempt to try and let her know (and everyone else who cares to listen) what a blessing she has been to me.

I don’t have much time to write, so the one aspect that I want to highlight is a phrase I read somewhere that says motherhood is a ministry, an act of service. I’ve been blessed to have a stay-at-home mom, and have consequently been able to observe this ministry in action up close. Through her, (I hope!) I’ve learnt a little about how to give cheerfully and how to put other people’s needs above mine without complaining. I am still trying to learn what it means to serve others sacrificially, but I think that I will really only understand it when I become a mom. If I become a mom.

But I think that one of the greatest lesson she has taught me comes from watching as she has learnt to take her failures as a mother to the cross and trust that God is sovereign and loving enough to redeem them. It is both humbling and liberating for me to have a parent that does not hide her failures, but is able to say that even when she is wrong, God loves and forgives. It allows me to fail and still not give up on myself, because God shall see me through.

Another lesson that I've learnt from her is to live for something larger than yourself. While preparing for a recent high school reunion, my mother remarked she has very few accomplishments to show for her life other than her family. Sometimes, that makes her feel small (even though she is already small in stature!). Many of her former classmates have both a career and family life but she doesn’t. She never got to complete her tertiary studies, never got the chance to experience/obtain many of the things that are considered essential today (no, I don’t really want to specify what). She never got to make a life of her own, to devote time to herself and her ambitions. In response, I have this from Philip Yancey’s Getting a Life:

“Inspection stickers used to have printed on the back 'Drive carefully—the life you save may be your own.' That is the wisdom of men in a nutshell. What God says, on the other hand, is 'The life you save is the life you lose.' In other words, the life you clutch, hoard, guard, and play safe with is in the end a life worth little to anybody, including yourself; and only a life given away for love's sake is a life worth living. To bring his point home, God shows us a man who gave his life away to the extent of dying a national disgrace without a penny in the bank or a friend to his name. In terms of men's wisdom, he was a perfect fool, and anybody who thinks he can follow him without making something like the same kind of fool of himself is laboring under not a cross but a delusion.”

Mom, of course giving up your life to serve four children and a husband (oh, ok. Make that five children) is foolish in the eyes of the world. Thank you for having the courage to go against the grain. I rejoice that God has truly raised you up from where you were and filled you with good things. May He supply all the fulfillment and contentment you so richly deserve, all the days of your life (even if that includes grandchildren. Epp!!) Amen.