my mom

 

My mom is relentlessly hard working. I have never seen such diligence in a human being. I didn’t realize what an anomaly it was because it was so normal to me. 

She babysat up to 13 kids while raising 5 of her own until she went back to school, finished her degree and became a teacher. During those years, she also worked a job and completed her student teaching  hours while continuing to make a hot breakfast and five sack lunches every morning for us kids. When I think about the logistics of making that happen along with laundry and grocery shopping and juggling all of our teenage angst, it wrecks me. I had no idea because she never complained or boasted. She just did the hard work and made it happen. As a matter of fact, I don’t remember if we even had a graduation party for her. She just went on to begin teaching full-time with meekness and grace.

A few years ago, there were 28 of us home for Thanksgiving. We were stacked in bedrooms and on floors and the living room housed teenagers and both fridges and the back porch were full of food. At some point, the stomach flu came through the front door and filtered through the ranks mercilessly. 

My mom hates to throw up more than anyone I know, but with this virus, there was no stopping it. It ravaged nearly everyone. I was just starting to feel the repercussions of it on Thanksgiving morning, and went into the kitchen early to refill my ice water. That’s when I found my mom, white as a ghost, slightly crouching over, prepping the Thanksgiving Turkey. I begged her  to she stop and go to bed, she was obviously very sick. Only when I convinced her that no one would want to eat because everyone was miserable, did she stop working and put herself back to bed.

I went up to check on her a few hours later and she was curled up in bed, buried under a pile of blankets. I’d never seen her so vulnerable. She is selfless, almost to a fault. Hard-working without reservation. When there is something to be done for someone else, she will do it, no matter what it costs her. 

I find myself floundering between go-time and endlessly stopping. There’s no happy speed limit regulation. It’s a wide-open race to the finish or a full stop that looks a little like a long vacation. I fall incredibly short in comparison to my mother’s work ethic, but she laid the groundwork for me without any consideration of accolades, always considering others more important than herself. She’s a model of Proverbs 31.

“We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work.”

‭‭John‬ ‭9:4‬ ‭ESV‬‬

https://www.bible.com/bible/59/jhn.9.4.esv