It is fun to be a mother, isn’t it? Yes, children are gifts from God (Psalm 127:3) and it is absolutely a sacred privilege to have kids and be able to raise them in the best way you know how.
And what a joy to have one Sunday of a year to hear what my kids have to say about me, their mother. It just blesses my heart to read their handwritten notes. I don’t usually like those Hallmark cards. I mean there are beautiful ones out there but I prefer my kids to make a Mother’s Day card using their own unique and creative ideas. Every year the depth of their notes takes a different level:
“Thank you, Mom, for listening to my heart.” Oh, I instantly melt like butter!
So, I am so looking forward to reading their notes tomorrow morning. They are not going to serve me the typical American style breakfast because after 2012 Mother’s Day, I told them that my desire is to have my own daily breakfast: Raw almond, Kashi cereal and a cup of green tea; the kind of breakfast that comes close to my childhood Ethiopian breakfast. You see, growing up, my breakfast was one small bread (which used to be sold for 25-cents, in Ethiopian currency) with one cup of tea. The first time my older son heard me talk about this, he asked, “What do you mean one small bread with a cup of tea? How do you eat it?”
What do they know about living in one of the third world countries, right?
The thing is, it doesn’t really matter how many stories I tell them, they still ask that silly question (silly to the person who lived in a third world country.)
Whenever they complain about their breakfast saying, “There is nothing interesting to eat for breakfast in this house, only cereal, waffles and pancakes,” I respond, “You guys are spoiled. When I grew up,” they won’t even let me finish my sentence, one of them would say, “you were eating 25-cent worth of dry and small bread with a cup of tea, ALLLLWAYS, right?”
You know, even if they rub it on my face, I always tell them different stories so they know where I and their father, their parents, came from. We want them to have that grounded earthly identity. Of course the first identity we want them to be established on is the identity they have in Christ.
Hey, Happy Mother’s Day to all of you mothers! ///
P. S. I’m posting this today because I may not find time to post this tomorrow morning.