“Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord shall be praised.”  Proverbs 31:30

“Don’t ever give up on the Lord Jesus!  He is with you constantly, to be your rock of strength and a daily friend.”  Mom, taken from her memory book given to her daughter Mary Jo

It’s Mother’s Day, so how can I NOT write about my mom?  She was the most incredible woman!  Faithful to her husband, to her family, to her friends, and yes, to her God.  I was blessed to have her as my mother.  There’s so much I could write about this woman who was raised dirt poor in the sticks of Northern Wisconsin, lived through the depression, watched her husband go off to war, scratched out a living with three little girls on a farm, and eventually became a postmaster with only an eighth-grade education.  If one were to ask her, she would unhesitatingly say that it was her faith that saw her through everything, even the debilitating dementia that eventually claimed her beautiful life.  

A page or two on a blog post isn’t nearly enough to write about her.  So instead, I’ll share a few of her words, recorded in the little booklet written to one of her daughters, from which the above quote is taken.  I hope it provides some spiritual inspiration, as well as appreciation for the God and the mom who has given you life.

“When I was small I was nicknamed ‘Deanie in a cub’, a title I put on myself, the best I could say it, of a picture taken of me nude in a galvanized washtub.”

“Eating our food put before us was a must.  I remember not liking green peas, and my father kept me at the table until I finally gave in and ate cold peas at 9:00 that night.”

“Once I climbed up on the house roof and sat straddled over the roof beam.  Do you think I was a tomboy?”

“I never dared to fib, or we would’ve had our mouth washed out with soap!”

“I don’t remember a first kiss; couldn’t have impressed me much.”

“There wasn’t any TV back then to poison our minds, thank goodness.”

“I was baptized at Imalone (a very small village), in the Chippewa River, and it always held a special fascination for me. Olaf Newhagen was the minister.  Lucille, Viola, and I were each immersed. On the shore there were singers and a guitar playing ‘Shall We Gather at the River?’, It was beautiful.” 

“I remember our Sunday School teacher telling how the end of the world was coming and how blood would be as deep as the horses’ bridles.  I had nightmares of that story.”

“On Sunday we weren’t allowed to play ball, play cards, any fun things at all.”

“When dandelions first came up in Spring, we sometimes took hard boiled eggs in our lunch pails, then for lunch we picked the dandelion greens, washed them under the pump, and had an egg and greens salad.”

“We gathered moss from logs and stumps in the woods when we lived at Nail Creek.  We built nests out of the moss along the outside wall of the house for the Easter Bunny to put our goodies in.  One Easter, I particularly remember, we built one for our mom and dad, and on Easter morning their nests were full of rocks!”

“I remember neighbor men often walking down the road to our place leading a cow.  In later years I learned it was because my dad owned a bull.  No sex education back then!”

“My sister Florence sent me my very first lipstick when I was about 15 years old.  Even then, my dad wouldn’t let us wear makeup often.”

“Twenty-Five years or more ago, I gave my mom a bird cage music box, with two little birds on a teeter totter. I still have it, getting it after she died.  The music box still plays ‘What the World Needs Now, is Love, Sweet Love.”

“I have always liked Ecclesiastes 3:1-8.  Also the book of Ruth is a touching one in its entirety.”

“For everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven;

A time to be born and a time to die . . .

A time to weep and a time to laugh;

A time to mourn and a time to dance;

A time to love. . . “ 

Thank you, Mom, for touching so many with your love throughout the entirety of your life.