Mommy

5:17 p.m. Today's project was to attend the mother-daughter brunch that my Mrs. Heather Love organized for the high school girls' ministry she leads at Sandals. I was so blessed to be included with the other (much younger) moms and daughters. A lovely dress-up affair started my Mother's Day weekend just right!

Heather arrived before 10:00 and since I was dressed and ready, and had two kinds of sun tea chilling in the fridge, we were able to pack up her car and take off. We even had time to stop at Michael's craft store for plain wood picture frames for a mom-girl activity. How of the Lord is it, when you walk into a store and the item you are seeking is on sale, 3 for $2!

On the way to the gorgeous host home in the area of Victoria and La Sierra, my daughter and I had plenty of time to reminisce about the people who live in the homes we passed in Woodcrest and the Arlington area--her high school friends' parents; our piano teacher. We talked about reconnecting with a friend she attended kinder with at Bethel Christian School on Van Buren, where I was her teacher. Nothing like driving on Victoria Avenue to stir up memories for Riversiders!

We both are very sociable, and keep in touch with friends, no matter how long ago they left Riverside. And we both love the groups the Lord used to form our character--the youth group at Victoria Community (now the Grove) for her, women's ministries for me--and civic groups for both of us. "A friend loves at all times," Proverbs 17:17 says, and memories of times spent with friends are so rich, pleasant, and satsifying when life gets difficult. Thank you, Lord, for shared memories!

I am my mother's daughter as well. Mommy, now deceased for 5 years, was friendly, outgoing, and loved people. How the two of us would crack up laughing over the off-the-wall incidents we remembered from my childhood, teen and young adult years, 55 years' worth. (Give or take, because I don't remember anything before I was three). Mother's Day is still bittersweet, because who else would know how the robbery went down at the Circle K she managed at Columbia and La Cadena I was actually on the phone with her just after she was locked in the back room by the robbers, so I called the police. They got there fast, and let Mommy out, but with the store located at the entrance of two freeway onramps, the pair made a clean getaway. That was in the 80's. The school field trips she helped chaperone in Hampton, New Hampshire in the 50's and in Redlands in the 60's only she would have joined me in remembering, because my sister was too young to go and my dad would have been at work.

And only she knows the myriad ways she helped me get back on my feet as a newly divorced single mother, who eventually finished my bachelor's degree and went on to be self-supporting.

And no other family was there when she went forward at Calvary Chapel Riverside on a Sunday night in 1980 to accept Christ as her Savior--that moment belongs to the two of us, and Jesus.

When I see both of my daughters leading, mentoring and teaching God's Word, I see a work of the Holy Spirit that humbles me. To God be the glory!

Lord, may my maternal influence be an eternal one for my daughters, and for my sons!