"I Am the Lucky One"

Happy Mother's Day to Mom, the original seat belt! Today is Mother's Day and this is the card I got from Numero Uno child. It really cracks me up, because I spent their formative years throwing my arms across the chest of the child sitting next to me on the front bench seat of the car to prevent their being thrown through the windshield. Lord knows how they managed to live through no car seats and certainly no seat belts. One absolute rule was that they couldn't sit too near any door, because who knew whether or not the lock would hold and one could possibly fall from the car during a turn and get run over by the back wheels. However did I manage to get them safely through infancy, school, college and to the altar without killing anyone?

I think motherhood started for me when I was about ten or eleven and our neighbor had a baby boy. I was allowed to play with him on a blanket in their backyard while my Mom chatted with the new mother.

I fell in love with the smell, feel, touch, the enchanting smiles and the cuddly little body of any baby. Little girls are preprogrammed to desire babies in their lives. Shortly after marrying at seventeen, my mind turned to thoughts of having my very own baby to cuddle and smell and love. Luckily, God knew that we were not ready financially for parenthood. He made me wait until I was twenty-one, before He felt I could be trusted with an infant of my own. I couldn't believe it when after all those months and years of trying, I finally knew I was pregnant.

Every since that very first day, when I knew there was a baby coming to our home, I have been the most blessed of all creation --- a mother. If there is to be a special day --- it should be a day for rejoicing in the fact that God has seen fit to give us children to raise and love and then set free. This is a picture of me with my first child when she was two years and six weeks old. My second child was only six weeks old and I was six weeks away from getting pregnant with my third. How ironic that after almost four years without children, we had three in less than three years. Motherhood has been a joy every step of the way and I am still thanking God for the children he sent my way almost fifty years ago. I love you Lesley, Matthew and Stacey and the ten children you have brought into my life in the last twenty-five years. The pastor praised moms in church this morning, but it is we who should be thanking God for the privilege He has given to us. I cannot imagine a life without my children. To quote Ben Folds, " I Am the Lucky One!"