Happy Mothers' Day!

I am so thankful for my mom today, who reared me with God's help at an older age than most mothers. Mom, I don't know how you found the energy to go to work and take care of me, except that the Lord must have given you grace! I'm finding more and more that being a mom is a difficult job in the sense of the daily-ness of it. There is no "spring break" or "half-days" like they used to give us in school. And no sick days either! My mom never complained, though. Thank you for all your love!

And Mom Rowley, you have been a blessing too! Thank you for all the love you've shown to us; for advice you've given and your prayers. There are all those "mother-in-law" jokes out there, and people who don't get along with their mothers-in-law, but you're not that way. :) I've thanked the Lord over and over for giving Josh parents like you.

This Mothers' Day, I am again celebrating cautiously. There is a large part of me that still cringes at all the from-the-pulpit celebration of mothers, when there are women sitting in the congregation who desperately want to be mothers but aren't. I've been there. It's very lonely, and it stings. I pray for those women today whose hearts ache.

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