The Faith That Was In . . .Your Mother.

My mom was a tiny little thing . . . she weighed 98 pounds for many of her adult years and had more energy than the EverReady Rabbit. She would garden, sew, have lots of company, teach Sunday school and transport us lots of places.

She had always had to work hard -- her mother had been sick so much of Mom's young life and at 3 she said she learned to wash dishes and early on learned to take care of people. After she graduated from high school she did home nursing.

She was creative and could make a dress out of a yard of fabric. She could re-design clothes into another garment. She canned, made jellies and sauces and loved to bake and made the best candy. Every holiday she thought was worth decorating for. Whatever was worth doing -- she believed you could learn how to do it. Her Dad was a carpenter and she taught my brothers to build cabinets and desks. She oversaw our 4-H projects, made us practice our instruments and our house was always humming with something she had us doing. A lot of those projects took place on our dining room table.

We didn't have a lot of money and her words always were, "We can make it for so much cheaper than that". As a teenager I hated those words. I wanted clothes from the department store and she taught me to sew and make my own.

One of my earliest memories of my mother is watching her pray silently for the longest time before she ate her lunch. I wondered at the time what she could be talking to God about for that long. I'm sure my brothers and I gave her plenty of reasons, but prayer was always such a vital part of her life. I know it sustained her as she took care of my Dad his last 15 years.

One thing that made her wise was the time she spent in the Word. After we all left home she set out to read through the Bible each year. Oftentimes she'd get up early and read for long periods of time. She and Dad faced his confining illness head on those long years and her care for him resembled that of an intensive care unit.

Mother's Day 2003 was our last Mother's day with Mom. The three of us were here together - By that time she could talk very little. She continued to smile and laugh and we could tell her mind was still very sharp.

I wonder what she thought about during those long days -- she often would look over at the pictures of her "special six" (grandkids) and whisper I'm sinning by being so proud.

One thing I'm most sure of -- those passages she had stored up during the years before sustained her - "Your word have I hid in my heart".