79 Things I Love About My Mom!

Today is my mom’s 79^th birthday.  Yesterday I got to thinking about her and all the ways the Lord has blessed me through her and I decided to write a few down. Once I got going, I realized it would be pretty simple to come up with a lot of things I am thankful for! So, I decided to try for 79. It was easy!

Without further ado, in no particular order, I present you with 79 things I am thankful to God for in my mom:

1. Taking me to church when I was a boy
2. Letting me be friends with her adult friends
3. Buying me a lot of Legos before they were cool
4. Taking me to the cottage when the rest of the family had to work in the summer
5. Letting me spend endless days at the cottage in a swimsuit – and only having to wear a shirt at meals!
6. For spilling that plate of spaghetti on my lap so I could learn how hot food feels on the legs
7. Making our home a place where all my friends liked to be
8. Taking me to hockey practices at early hours
9. Taking me to hockey games
10. Cheering like crazy at hockey games
11. Never complaining at my routinely poor grades on report cards
12. Coming home for lunch every day from the flower shop
13. Taking me to thousands of visits to the doctor to get those awful, twice-per-week allergy shots. Shudder.
14. Sitting by my bed every day when I was in the hospital for two weeks as a scared 11 year old.
15. Challenging me to corn on the cob eating contests when it was just the two of us at the cottage
16. Doing my laundry for 19 years
17. Coming to all my school plays, concerts and other stuff
18. Making me stay at school during kindergarten while I cried like a firehose
19. Asking my principal to help me when my entire class was out to beat me up – it was a pretty miserable existence for a few days before that!
20. Years of routine. Routine meals, routine conversations, routine weeks – blessed routine!
21. Letting me eat popcorn in the family room while we watched Love Boat.
22. Playing softball at the cottage in front of my friends and knocking one out of the park!
23. Allowing me to have three cookies a day. A rule I never broke. (Until I was married!)
24. Letting me come into her room on Sunday mornings and jumping into bed with her and Dad.
25. Not killing me after I vomited apple juice all over her and some important afghan that got “retired” after that moment in time
26. Smiling a lot
27. Listening to what had to be remarkably boring stories of what happened that day at school
28. Paying for four years of The Master’s College while the Canadian dollar tanked
29. Telling me it probably was a good idea for me to move out and go to California
30. Being excited when I wanted to get baptized even though that was different for us Presbyterians
31. Not getting angry at me for barely writing one letter per year home while I lived in LA
32. Coming to my graduation from The Master’s College
33. Accepting Susan without hesitation from the very start
34. Letting us live in her home for a few months while we got set up back in Canada and headed off to Chesley Baptist Church
35. Letting us live in her home for 13 months while we got Grace Fellowship Church started.
36. Regularly visiting us in Chesley
37. Being there when Allie and Sophie and Will were born – and sending beautiful flowers when Chloe came into he world in LA
38. For listening when I emotionally explained I would need to resign the first church I pastored in the city
39. For telling me that boys who spat on sidewalks were really quite rude
40. For teaching me to open the door for ladies
41. For teaching me that men should walk on the side of the street exposed to danger or splashing and keep the lady with them protected
42. For making me chop wood and keep the pile by the stove in the cottage filled
43. For getting up early every cold morning to silently start a fire – how does a person crinkle newspaper silently? Still in awe of that!
44. For never complaining at all the band practises my Dad held so that I could enjoy that little bit of fun
45. For letting me get out of doing dishes so I could play the drums while Dad played the organ for what seemed like every night after dinner
46. For keeping a clean house
47. For always respecting my dad. Never a word of criticism do I think I heard
48. For coming to my graduation from The Master’s Seminary
49. For loving my kids
50. For coming with Dad to countless birthday parties and seeming really excited about the presents
51. For loving Susan and me back in the early days and taking our kids so we could get away
52. For coming to Grace Fellowship Church in the evenings when we first got started and being so supportive
53. For asking me to baptize her and getting immersed in a public pool in front of a crowd in her seventies – with joy
54. Having relationships with folks in the church that are independent of me as the pastor
55. Modelling loyalty in friendship
56. Caring for friends who have gotten older and need help
57. Caring for a special couple of ladies who need love
58. For talking on the phone to everybody. I’ve always loved that about my mom. She’s good on the phone!
59. For not being afraid to ask for help when Dad got sick
60. For sticking tight with Dad through his cancer – right to the end
61. For sticking tight to her mom and dad when both of them came to the end of their lives
62. For loving her brothers and sister and in-laws and the rest of the extended family
63. For loving my Dad’s mom through her trials and illnesses and not flipping her lid when grandma got the cat food instead of tuna in the sandwiches one day
64. For telling me to stop whining when I worked at the flower shop
65. For telling everybody in her orbit to stop whining!
66. For praying for people every day
67. Letting me drive a boat at 14 years old without a life jacket on.
68. Making me be a cub, then a scout and letting me quit when it got bad
69. Not throwing our television out the window when I insisted on watching Emergency every day after school and turning up the volume when the sirens “sang”
70. Not harping on the little things
71. Always stopping at Grandpa and Grandmas on the way to the cottage or back and for all the other visits there. I loved those times
72. Never making me feel I had to do something intangible or otherwise in order to be accepted by her
73. Not being a gossip
74. Being quick to laugh
75. All those years of family gatherings at the house and the cottage
76. Still cheering like crazy at hockey games
77. Never complaining about chronic physical ailments
78. Writing well over 29,000 birthday cards annually. At least that is what it looks like!
79. For loving me.

Not everyone is blessed with a mom like mine. I thank God for her!

Bring Your Child With Disabilities to Church With You

Show up and prepare somebody else for this life (and maybe save a life while doing so) « The Works of God:

I think everything my friend John Knight writes is important, but I really appreciated this little section in his article interacting with Mark Leach's piece...

"I know church can be hard, but if at all possible, show up.  Attempting to ‘do’ church with a child with disabilities is complicated, sometimes frustrating, and even overwhelming.  Yet the very presence of our families makes a difference!  When Paul was really little and we returned to church, I watched one family from afar who have a child with Down syndrome.  I never even approached them. Paul doesn’t have Down syndrome, but just knowing there was another dad walking around with a disabled child was a comfort.  It was only recently that I had the chance to tell that dad the impact he had. 

Our children matter, and people can see that when we show up with all our complications and embarrassing behaviors and strange noises.  And by doing so we help plant different seeds in people’s minds."

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