Today I shared a secret story about myself with a couple of people because they were conversing about a subject terrible and personal to me. One person cried, the other sat stunned by the story. The silence reverberated in the room at the end.
I realized, once more, the amazing lessons I credit to my mother. For my entire life, with rare exception, she has quietly been an example of wisdom, quiet grace, thoughtful care, relentless forgiveness, and unfailing love. Through terrible events, overwhelming grief, or grand disappointment, she has depended on her faith, her belief in God, His grace and the power of forgiveness to change lives. Daily, it seems, I apply those lessons.
Thank you, Mom, for your lifelong lifestyle lessons of love, forgiveness, grace, and mercy. Rarely, have you dictated. Merely your example has been there to watch. I am profoundly lucky to call you Mom. My one guilty pleasure is to relish how jealous others are of me that I am but one of three who get to use that title and you respond.
You may never meet many of my friends. But, I will have to say that daily someone asks about you, having maybe never met you. There is no special event that makes me mention my thanks. Merely that during the sharing of a secret, the wisdom I have taken to heart, the actions I may take to mend from your example regularly brings health, hope, healing, and happiness to my heart and others that weren't.
I love you, MOM.
