Celebrate your Mom ... it works for me!

Welcome to Day 14 of the 31 Days series It Works for Me!

(this was so much on my heart yesterday ... 

so I'm writing it on the 15th but dating it October 14 ... shhh!  don't tell!)

The 31 Days of Blogging Challenge ... is a challenge ... dear me!  

But I'm enjoying it thoroughly.  If you have not checked out The Nester's list of 31 Day bloggers, please do, there are so many excellent bloggers offering excellent content.  

Yesterday would have been my Mom's 86th birthday.  She made a surprise exit from this life 11 years ago.  In many ways that seems like yesterday, and in many ways it seems a lifetime ago.  

Losing a mother is a journey most people walk through in life.  It's my hope that God blessed you with a loving mother like He did me.  I can tell you for certain that no matter how many times you've expressed appreciation to your mother, when she's gone, it will not have been nearly enough.   

The sadness for losing her, and the sadness that she hasn't been here to participate in the last decade of my life is a constant current.  Sometimes it's a strong current, sometimes it's just a ripple, but it's always there.  

Before grief and I became familiars, 

I thought it would eventually go away, but it doesn't.  

It endures.  

But more importantly, the love also endures, and it's the current of love that's strongest.

 "All I can do is love her, and love the world, 

emulate her by living with daring and spirit and joy.” 

― Jandy Nelson, The Sky Is Everywhere

Please allow me to celebrate my Mom with you here today and 

share the ways I wish to celebrate and emulate her:

-  She had the ability to turn strangers into dear friends with shocking speed.  I'm pretty sure this was her superpower.  When she and Dad would travel, she would come home every single time saying, "We met the nicest people!!!"  We teased her that nicest people seemed to be following her around everywhere she went.  But actually what happened is that she brought out the nicest in people because she herself was one of the nicest.  

-  She possessed a gracious talent for entertaining and cooking.  My mom loved nothing more than gathering friends and family from near and far and cooking for them.  She reveled in the details, the menu, and getting everything just right.  And then when the company began to pour in, she glowed with delight and love and pleasure.

-  She lived every day with the tendency to believe the best about the people she loved.  Sometimes this required just flat out overlooking the unlovely.  And in classic motherly fashion, she always believed if her children were involved in anything, they were certainly the very best at it.  

I believe one of our greatest pleasures in Heaven 

will be to know each other outside our earthly limitations.  

Until then, I celebrate the lovely things about my Mom 

as an antidote for grief ... it works for me!