Oh no! Not another mushy Mother's Day Story! - The Christian Online Magazine

Desirée's Parents

“My son, obey your father's commands, and don't neglect your mother's teaching.” Proverbs 6:20 (NLT)

You’ve been seeing the ads already—Hallmark, the department stores, and all the others telling you that you have to rush out and buy something to honor your Mom. Once again this year, I am at a loss as to what to get for my mom. I mean, you can only get her so many books or boxes of stationary (she loves to write people), before you figure she’s bored with it, right?

Mother’s Day is very close, so this year I wanted to tell you about my mom. You can be assured, there’s not a mushy thing about her. My mom is amazing, strong, loving, practical, and has loved God all of her life. She and my dad live next door to where my grandparents home stood. Dad always jokes that he could only get her about 60 feet away from her mother!

Mom met my dad when he came home on leave from the Navy during the World War II with her older brother. He wasn’t a Christian, but six weeks later they were married. Now my mom was really independent in those days, during the war she was a weather woman and today she can still tell me the names of clouds. A few years into the marriage, my dad came to the Lord. Some of my earliest memories of them are getting up each morning and going into the kitchen to find them sitting across from each other with their Bibles open, studying together.

We lived on a farm within a mile of four other uncles and aunts plus all the cousins and Mom’s parents. Grandpa had a dream that his family would live together and so he homesteaded 400 acres after World War I. In the winter we kids rode snowmobiles together, in the summer, we sank duck boats in the manmade duck ponds. The entire family attended the church just up the road, the one my grandpa pretty much built himself. It still stands today, although next to it is a much, much larger one to hold the ever-growing congregation up in the hills.

My mom is very special. She and my dad adopted me when I was 10 and my younger sister was 8. They already had two biological daughters; then they adopted us. In the coming years, five more would come into the family—two more girls, and three boys. I was always—and still am—introduced as “our No. 3 kid.” Now they have 14 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren with another one on the way.

Throughout my entire life as a member of this family, I learned so much about God and work! I saw my parents give, both to those they knew, and to perfect strangers. They helped in many ways from dry firewood to putting someone through a recovery program. Theirs was the little house by the side of the road that strangers stopped at. The doors were always unlocked until finally one day, they were burglarized. They unfailingly gave directions to those who were lost not only in the physical but in the spiritual.

One of my very favorite memories is this: Mom has a tremendous work ethic, and I am quite sure that even to this day, she can work circles around me. My mom has always given a great deal; although I believe there are many times that we will never know because she prefers it that way. However, this particular time has gone down in family history, and the story is shared from generation to generation.

One of the favorite family stories about her occurred before I arrived, but it’s still a story that I love. It clearly shows how hard she works and that “the shirt off your back” is the real thing.

Our family picked berries for many years at Elmer Larson’s berry farm in Springdale. The family “crew” included aunts and cousins, and there were quite a few of them. Now my mom’s usual uniform was, and sometimes still is, one of Dad’s logging work shirts. She wears the light blue denim shirt open at the neck, sleeves always rolled up almost to the elbow and untucked over blue jeans.

On a really warm summer day, my mom was working hard picking berries when she noticed a man nearby picking with no shirt on. She saw that his arms, back and all around him were terribly scratched. Concerned, my mom told him that when she left that day, she would give him the shirt she was wearing.

Perhaps he (and everyone else) assumed that she had another shirt on under it or a spare shirt in the car. Imagine everyone’s shock when, at the end of the day, she unbuttoned the shirt, gave it to the surprised man…and drove home in her bra!

My mom and dad have not just been parents to me. They have been examples of Jesus and His love. For a child who was moved from pillar to post in her childhood with no roots, no stability, and not knowing who she was supposed to really love, they have been pillars in my life.

Many others have mothers who did not treat them well, abused them, or mothered them in ways that caused great pain. God sees that and not only does He understand, He weeps over those children.

Today, if you are angry about the mother you didn’t have or the mother you had who wasn’t what she should have been, remember that God wept for you at those times when you hurt and He still does. If you are grieving to know your mother, your mother has passed away too soon, or she is gone and you desperately miss her, He longs to comfort you.

If you long to be a mother, He understands this too. You see, His Heart’s Cry is that all would know Him, that all would come to His arms, hear His heartbeat, be soothed by His quiet voice.

Come, let His love comfort you, encourage you, sustain you. He truly loves you.

Desirée L.M. Pheister is a member of Eastside Foursquare Church. She is a newlywed, mother of a teenager, a grandmother, and an administrative assistant at a medical research facility. You may reach her at: marrion8955@yahoo.com