I have been greatly blessed by a godly mother. She was faith­ful to take us to church every week as I was grow­ing up. She gave me wise coun­sel as I was prepar­ing for mar­riage, for which I am so grate­ful. I remem­ber her sit­ting on my bed beside me as a teenager con­sol­ing me, com­fort­ing me as I strug­gled with what­ever was caus­ing me angst at the moment.

While my par­ents didn’t home­school us or raise us the way we are try­ing to raise our chil­dren, my mother is our biggest cheer­leader. She rec­og­nizes that she laid a foun­da­tion for us on which to build. I pray that my chil­dren will do the same. My mother doesn’t seem to carry any feel­ings of hurt or jeal­ousy because we have taken a slightly dif­fer­ent path with our fam­ily. She is hum­ble and gra­cious. She tells us she is proud of us for see­ing these things, and loves that her grand­chil­dren are being raised in a godly home, that we bring the Word of God to bear in their lives.  Like most Chris­t­ian par­ents of her gen­er­a­tion, home­school­ing wasn’t any­where on the radar. What will it be for our chil­dren? Surely we are not see­ing some­thing that the Lord will show them. One step at a time, right? If I have learned any­thing from my mother, I have learned that God works all things for good to those who love Him and are called accord­ing to his pur­pose. (Ron 8:28) I have learned that even though my chil­dren may tweak some things in their par­ent­ing, it isn’t a slap on us. It’s a good thing, assum­ing that they are seek­ing the Lord in these things.

Occa­sion­ally, my hus­band will be struck by some­thing I’ve done or a way I have responded to the chil­dren. He has shared with me that my gen­tle response to a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion has sur­prised him. He thought I would have been jus­ti­fied to be upset or angry. But to me, my reac­tion is just a response that I have learned from my lovely mother. She was always gen­tle and kind. She seemed to have a bot­tom­less well of patience and kind­ness. My prayer is that this legacy will con­tinue to our future gen­er­a­tions. What a beau­ti­ful thing!

Mar­riage gave me a sec­ond mother. My husband’s mother has been a won­der­ful exam­ple of a mother-in-law. Early on in our mar­riage, my dear mother-in-law went out of her way to make sure I knew I was loved and wel­comed into their fam­ily. She did large things and small things to demon­strate her heart to me. She wanted me to under­stand that she rec­og­nized that my role in her son’s life now super­seded her role as the pri­mary woman influ­enc­ing him. She would give us gifts with my name on them first, which is such a small thing, but it spoke vol­umes to me of her love. She com­mu­ni­cated with words that her desire was that she would never over­step her bound­aries in her deal­ings with us. And she has been very faith­ful in this. In many ways she has taught me by her exam­ple how to be a mother-in-law. I have never i under­stood the dis­dain for mothers-in-law. While we don’t agree on many things per­tain­ing to the Lord and how we live out our lives, we have a deep and abid­ing love and respect for each other. I am so thank­ful for the son she raised. She poured her life into her chil­dren. She labored at home to give them a con­sis­tent and lov­ing home.

When Mike and I were mar­ried, we so enjoyed spend­ing time with his par­ents. They would open their home to us, spend time with us, play games with us. We have some really great mem­o­ries with them. As the Air Force moved us around the globe, and chil­dren were added to our home, the vis­its became less fre­quent. We are thank­ful for those sweet mem­o­ries. We cling to them. And we try to insti­tute many of those things into our family.

God has been so good to me. He not only gave me a lov­ing, pre­cious mother, but he gave me a kind and wise mother-in-law. Happy Mother’s Day to my two moth­ers. I love you both so very much.