Showing posts with label mom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mom. Show all posts

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Morning Glories and Mom

My Mom loved flowers ... when I was a little girl, I remember the myriad of Marigolds she planted.  I remember them because of their strong smell.  I didn't like to smell them but they were very hardy my Mom told me.  I did love to smell the ruby red roses that grew at the edge of the house and how they made the most beautiful bouquets.  I remember how we pinned them to our dresses, she and I, on Mother's Day.   

I remember the fascinating Four O' Clocks because they knew what time to open their delicate purple petals to the afternoon sun.  They were always on time!  I remember the beautiful blue Morning Glories climbing and winding up and up the trellis by the gently sloping porch at the side of our house on dead man's curve ... yes, they really did call it that although no one died while I lived there.  Those Morning Glories ... they were quite simply ... glorious!  As I walked among the flowers at the Inn Above Onion Creek ... this week on retreat ... suddenly I saw beautiful blue Morning Glories and I remembered Mom ... again.  She would have loved them!

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Remembering Mom on her Birthday ...

Three years ago we were celebrating Mom's 80th Birthday.  I think we knew it would be her last ... I think she enjoyed it.   Perhaps what I know the most about my mom is that she was the very best "Grandma" ever.  And as I sit holding my brand new grandson, I know I'll never be the Grandma she was ... I'll simply be that Grandma that I am ... singing made up songs and reading books to a three week old.  I wonder if my mom ... 
Well, there we are, mom and me.  This is the way I like to remember Mom ... young and beautiful.  And holding a baby.  My mom, she loved babies ... children and family were her passion.  I guess there wasn't much she wouldn't do for us.  I probably didn't appreciate her the way she deserved to be appreciated.  But in my own way, I loved her.  And so today, I shed a few tears and I take a deep breath and I look into the eyes of my own grandson and I love with the love that she loved with ...  Thanks Mom for loving me in the only way you knew how to love.    

Have you ever sat and pondered love?  Whose love is it that permeated your being and made you who you are?  Whose love personifies God's love for you?   

In The Naked Now, Richard Rohr writes, "If you have never experienced human love, it will be very hard for you to access God as Love.  If you have never let God love you, you will not know how to love humanly in the deepest way."   (page 140)

In Romans 8:39 Paul writes, "No power in the sky above or in the earth below--indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord."  

Thanks God for loving me so that I might learn to love more deeply every day ...