Celebrating Mother’s Day

On this Mother’s Day weekend, I’m thinking about my mother and about her mother, two of the women I admired most in all the world! How I miss them both! And I’m also remembering my mother-in-law. What a dear, precious woman she was! Each time I think of these women, some verses from Proverbs 31 come to mind:

"Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she smiles at the future.  She opens her mouth in wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.  She looks well to the ways of her household, and does not eat the bread of idleness.  Her children rise up and bless her; her husband also, and he praises her."  (Proverbs 31:25-28 NASB)

This Mother’s Day, I’m celebrating and remembering my mother and my grandmother and the second mother I gained when I married her son. I’m celebrating the joy of being a mother and a grandmother. I'm so thankful for the blessing of my sons, the sons God gave me, the ones the doctors said I would never have. I'm loving my role as Nana, being grandmother to two precious young men who bring me so much joy! I'm celebrating the mothers of those young men, the daughters who came into my life because they are the women my sons chose, the women who love my sons. I’m celebrating the joy they each bring to our family, their unique personalities and gifts, and the blessing they are to all of us.

Mostly I’m celebrating that my mother and my grandmother and my mother-in-law and the countless grandmothers before them that I never knew, as well as those daughters who are now part of my life, all love the Lord and His Word. I’m celebrating our commitment to have families who love Jesus. I’m celebrating our desire to honor Him in all we do and say.

My prayer for us today is that we each be found faithful. There's a song called "Find Us Faithful" from the not too distant past that talks about this concept: May all who come behind us find us faithful, may the fire of our devotion light their way, may the footprints that we leave lead them to believe.* 

I'm thankful today for the women who went before me who were found faithful, who left those kind of footprints. I'm prayerful today that I will be found faithful, that the fire of my devotion will light the way for those who come behind me. I'm prayerful that I will love the Lord with all my heart and soul and mind. That my love will be evidenced in my behavior. That I will leave for my sons and my daughters and my grandsons, and all who follow behind me, a legacy of that kind of devotion to the Lord. I'm celebrating today what God will do in and through us when we commit ourselves completely to Him.

And I am so thankful that I had a Mother and a Grandmother who modeled that kind of love and devotion.

 

L-R, my great-grandmother, Leona Harwell Knox; my mother, Helen Neil Austin, me, and my grandmother, Ethel Knox Neil


"Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD, she shall be praised."  (Proverbs 31:30 NASB)


*Find Us Faithful: words and music by Jon Mohr