Monday, May 11, 2015

Post-Mother's Day Reflections

People talk about their bucket lists and things they'd like to do before they die.

Every day, I meet people with amazing talents and abilities.

I smile during the reading of the parable of the talents. I totally relate to the dude with the lone talent that he buried in the ground.

Whereas others have many abilities, I have few. My deficiences are many, and, often, overshadow the abilities. I've quipped that when God was distributing talents, I was probably in the bathroom.

From my earliest recollection, I have known God me made for three purposes in life. My fear from my earliest recollection is that I will get to the end of my life with those purposes undone, that I will be the dude burying his talents in the ground.

And yet, the exercising of those talents are often so dependent on working cooperatively with another.

So my bucket list is small: just three items. One is to raise a large family, another is to write for a living. I'll write about the second tomorrow.

When I was a little girl, I always said I would have ten children. When I was expecting my oldest, I had a dream where I saw all six of my children: their looks, their personalities. Now this being a dream, some of the details were off, but most of the particulars were exact and have come true.

It took a lot of courage and determination and overcoming of challenges to realize this dream. I have six biological children, three stepchildren, and one child in heaven. I suck at math, but I can add.

My view looking backward is a tremendous sense of accomplishment.

Each one is someone I am proud to know.

Can I take credit for it? Well, no, not until God obliterates free will.

But I can take, and do, take tremendous satisfaction in choosing, moment by moment, to pray and to labor and to grow and to try again, to be an example of what (and to what not ) imitate, to not falter, to set the environment, the big decisions and the many little decisions to do and be something positive that, somehow, the children could assimilate into their own to becomes the adults they are today.

Everything I did, somehow, fed back into the family, and I was always conscious of it.

Empty-nest blues? Not I.

I love watching my children working hard at shaping their lives, talents, families, all of which takes time. I love observing the spin they put on carrying their own torches.

For me, every day has been a Mother's Day.

And I am so thankful for the opportunity.

Thankful, thankful, thankful.

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