To The Mothers In My Life...

Once a year we pick out cards, try to find a suitable gift and turn our attention to one of the most important people in our lives, our mothers. Yet, it's one of the more frustrating holidays. First, I hardly ever know what to get for my wife. I can't possibly afford what she really deserves.

And then in our culture, there's the inevitable going to church on Mother's Day and enduring the Mother's Day program where mothers are praised for just how wonderful and important they really are. From my experience, I don't know one mother who, at the end of the meeting, feels as wonderful or important as the speakers intended them to feel. Of course, these meetings are usually always planned and organized by men. Maybe mothers should plan the Mother's Day church programs. But that hardly seems fair.

Millions of Mother's Day cards are sold. Chocolate, flowers, other things are bought, all in an attempt to try and express our appreciation to the women in our lives, but as I think about how best I can express how I truly feel towards to women in my life, anything I write seems inadequate. There's the woman who carried me for nine months, risked her own life to have me then gave me to a family unable to have children of their own. There's the woman who raised me and sacrificed everything for me and my siblings, a woman I miss every day. There's the woman who raised my wife and who still watches over her kids and grandkids and who wants only the best for her children.

And then, there's the woman who agreed to marry me and to change her last name to match mine. Everyday she shares my dreams and assumes the almost impossible job of being a mother to our children and a wife to the biggest child of the lot. I don't say it near enough of how amazing you are, faults and all. So on this Mother's Day I just want to say I love you and thank you for everything.