With Mother’s Day around the corner, I can’t help but miss my mama. This time of year always brings reflection for me of all the things my mama taught me. She had her flaws, like all of us, but she also was an example of how to live life following Jesus and serving Him.
My mom was a stay at home mom, with me being the baby of four children. She used her talents of piano playing as a source of added income for our family by teaching lessons after school most every day of the week. She loved and cared for my father, teaching me respect and honor for the man of the house. She taught each of us responsibility and the principle of doing our best, in everything we attempted.
One of my favorite memories of my mama was our times together in the kitchen. My mom was no chef, but we always had a hot meal on the table every night. On a tight budget with lots of mouths to feed, it was challenging to provide ‘extravagantly‘. We never felt like we lacked, mom always made it seem special. She introduced us to No-bake Cookies. I loved helping her. Measuring, pouring the ingredients into the pan, stirring, counting the minutes as you stir.... then spooning our cookies out onto wax paper and waiting for them to set.
The memory—it must be done exactly as the recipe called for or the cookies would not turn out right: too much cooking, the cookies were crumbling, too little cooking, the cookies were gooey. HOWEVER- they never were wasted! We ate them with a spoon, gooey or put the crumbs over ice cream. We would laugh together as we discussed what went wrong with the process when they didn’t turn out right, then keep on eating.
Mom always encouraged us to do our best, especially for Jesus. And, taught us our efforts are never in vain. There is always a lesson to learn and maybe a better way to accomplish a goal, but if we follow the recipe, there will always be a sweet reward!
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