Special to 0-A News
From Walter Albritton,
Senior Pastor Trinity UMC
For Sunday, May 9, 1999
Mother's Day is a good time for reminiscing about childhood days
Mother's Day will be a little sadder this year for me and my wife. It will be our first Mother's Day without either of our moms around.
We had them with us for a long time. Both lived into their nineties.
But my mom died last spring and Dean's mom died this past March.
So this year, for the first time, there are no gifts to buy, no
cards to send, no phone calls to make.
Hopefully our children will remember to honor their mother. It
does my heart good to see our sons let their mom know how much
they love her, and how much they remember all the little things
she did for them when they were growing up.
Many years must pass before most of us begin to realize what sacrifices
our mothers made for us. When we are children, our judgment is
impaired by our own self-centeredness. We often take Mom's hard
work for granted. We are so focused on our own wants and desires
that we fail to recognize the many ways Mom has put her own needs
aside in order to meet our needs.
When we compare notes, it is amazing how many of us had mothers
who preferred necks, backs, and chicken wings instead of the breasts
and thighs. In fact, some of us are 30 or 40 years old before
it dawns on us why Mom always chose a neck or a wing. It was just
another way she found to deny herself so that her children could
have the best.
Mother's Day is a good day for families to get together and remember
fun times. Nowadays when our sons are with us, they laugh a lot
recalling some of the brilliant things they did when they were
young, and the dumb things their parents did. They remind us of
all the times when they "fooled us" so that we did not
have a clue what trouble they were getting into.
The late humorist, Erma Bombeck, understood the tough job that
mothers have. She said, "I always knew that raising kids,
if you did it right, might impair you from living a normal life.
My tongue was nearly severed by an eight-month-old baby who positioned
himself under my chin and then stood up."
It was Bombeck who could leave us in stitches describing the life
of a mother. "Motherhood," she said, "is definitely
not a job for sissies. You must have courage to enter a car with
a teenage driver who released the hood on the expressway, thinking
he's turning on the lights. You must have stamina to drag a preschooler
on your leg for two blocks while he is dragging a bubble-gum machine
behind him." Erma insisted that mothers must have the firmness
to say, "Do not force those keys up Mommy's nose or Mommy
will pass out."
Bombeck told about one mother who was numb as she checked herself
into a hospital. Asked the cause of her dizziness, she replied,
"I was hit by a truck." She simply did not have the
heart to tell the admissions nurse that it was a toy dump truck
that her son dropped on her head from his bunk bed. She told us
about another mom who had not seen her son's bedroom for more
than a year. Then one day when she dared to enter the room, she
opened the door, looked in, and lost the sight in her good eye!
Perhaps these funny stories, and those of your own family, can
give us a few good laughs on a day when many of us will experience
some sadness. But if we try, we can spend some time reminiscing
and laughing as we recall a few of our choice memories. Perhaps
the most important thing we can do is to remember, and give thanks,
for the many sacrifices our mothers made for us simply because
they loved us.
Most of us will have to admit, we were blessed by the Mom God
gave us, and we owe her a debt we can never repay.