My family does a lot to make Mother’s Day special for me. I don’t remember when Jim started this, but for the last several years he has made a special Mother’s Day meal, assigning each of the boys a task. Yesterday he grilled Marinated Ham Steak (recipe at the end an overly long post there) and sausage, and set one boy to making Rice-a-Roni, one to making a salad, and one making corn on the cob. Jim shops for the ingredients on Saturday and they all work together to clean up after the meal on Sunday. It’s wonderful. Years ago I heard our then youth pastor say that in his family they took turns washing dishes for his mom on Mother’s Day, and I thought…I am glad I am in the family I am in! (For more reasons than that, of course!). Getting the dishes washed once a year is ok, but I enjoy having the whole day off. And though I enjoy a nice meal out probably more than anyone else in the family, the restaurants here are overly crowded on Sundays anyway — I can just imagine what they’re like on Mother’s Day (in fact, when we got done eating, Jim said, “I bet the folks at Outback are still in line.”) For years we have generally avoided going out to eat on Sundays anyway, but that’s a different post. I enjoy coming home to curl up with a book or putter around on the computer that one Sunday a year.

I do make breakfast as usual. Our Sunday mornings are pretty well scheduled — we just have one shower and have to get ready in shifts, so it seemed prudent to just keep that as it was.

After dinner I opened my family’s gifts. I received several books, a book of vintage-looking scrapbooking paper, a punch tool that makes a lacy edge on paper, a gift card to Michael’s, a plaque with John 13:35 on it, another plaque about Moms (which matches the plaque that son’s girlfriend gave me here about being a second Mom), and a Deluxe Scrabble game (this one happens to have black and silver features and lettering). What I like best about it is that the board is on a turntable so no player has to look at the board upside down. I love word games but can hardly ever get my family to play with me. But four of us played last night, and it was fun. And hopefully they’ll play with me again some time. 🙂

Church yesterday morning didn’t really focus much on Mother’s Day, which was unusual, but at the evening service opportunity was given for every mom who wanted to to request a verse or two of a favorite song. Though that was nice, it went on for a long time! They didn’t want to cut off anyone’s opportunity. Then there were a few testimonies having something to do with mothers, and it was interesting the variety that came up — there was one from a young mom whose baby has had complications since before birth praising God for the way He has manifested Himself through her baby’s life so far, a teen-ager thanking God for his mother’s help and support through a recent diabetes diagnosis, another thankful for his mom’s support through a family trial, a husband thankful for his wife and the good job she did with their daughters while he was often gone with his job, an older man who was thankful for the single lady who led him to the Lord and the opportunity he had in later years to lead his parents to Him. It was a blessing to hear all of those.

The last couple of Mother’s Days have had something of a pang with missing my mom. Usually in the evening after church I would call her and we’d chat – -seldom for less than an hour. There were a few moments of missing her intensely, but it wasn’t quite as hard as the last two years — maybe due to the passage of time, maybe because the time I usually talked to her was the time we were all playing my new game. We did talk to my husband’s mom later in the evening.

I have several tasks on the agenda for this week, so I had better get to them. But I want to thank my family for the lovely day and all the special and thoughtful things you did!