If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
1 Corinthians 13:1-7NIV
Love never fails.
Mother’s Day was good for me this year.
I know this is a bit late to be posting about that particular day, but mother’s aren’t just mothers on Mother’s Day, are they now?
When I became a mom I really thought I was ready. Ready for the responsibility, ready for the sacrifice. I thought I knew what it would take. After all, I had been a nanny for years. Changing diapers, caretaking, chastising, playing, inventing.
I had no clue.
Thankfully, the one thing I didn’t know well, the one thing I hadn’t much experience with was the blessed reality of that miraculous child grace. That grace they give us as we grow and learn and fail and weep and laugh and feel pride and realize how heavy this is, this Motherhood.
That grace that they possess, the grace God gives them, falls on me every single day, making me wonder at how very blessed I am to have these three little gifts.
An eldest gift that insists on draining the batteries in the camera so he can make the perfect mini-documentary on the raccoons residing in our neighbors yard. (Someday he’ll be a great director and I’ll not mind this so much…I’m holding out.)
Another gift who loves pink. In any shade, any texture, any application. Is it pink? Yup. Then it’s automatically transcendent.
A littlest gift who somehow loves putting all his clothes on inside out and backwards. And he wears them that way all_day_long. “No, Mommy. I wike ‘em ‘dis way!”
So, these days I wake up and feel the weight, that blessed burden of care for these lovely mini-people who run around and are learning, from me (oy, oy, oy), how to view this world we live in.
And, somehow…well, I am learning the very same thing from them.
