Mother's Day

Why is it we only get ONE day? LOL. I love mother's day don't get me wrong. The one day my husband does the cooking and most of the child care with lots of help.......LOL. But I often wonder why it is as a world we only celebrate mother's day 1 day a year. Just thinking about the sacrifices my mother made, astounds me. There are times when we had no money and the cupboards were bare, she would make a meal with what meager staples she had and she would say "No baby you eat the 2nd piece, Mommy is not hungry". Was she hungry......of course she was but she new I was still hungry and did not want me to go to bed without having my hunger satisfied. I remember her pretending to discipline me in the back room when my father had ordered her to go back their and give me a "whipping" or he would, with the yard stick. She hit the bed and I hollered like I was being killed. Perhaps this was dishonest, but the punishment most definitely did not fit the crime I had "committed" as a 10 year old child. So I a great drama queen put on an oscar winning performance and my mother saved me from being beaten by my father. She put up with so much from my father THINKING because of the way she was raised that it was best for us to be a family then to break up. She suffered things at the hands of my father we never witnessed or understood until we were adults. So why is it......why do we celebrate motherhood, 1 day a year.

When I became a mother, suddenly the sacrifices made....were all too clear. As I looked into my newborn son's face, the earth moved. My world changed forever. I was now a mother with more responsibility than I had ever known. I was now responsible for the beautiful little being who looked at me with such clear eyes of trust and love that my heart felt it. My heart leapt within me and it has never been the same. Oh I had felt him move with in me, but when I beheld that tiny face for the first time......there are no words to describe it. Then as each of my daughters were born it happened again. Each time I looked into a newborn face.....something changed.......the earth moved and I was different. My girls opened open another part of my heart. As I think about mothers throughout the world and the sacrifices they make; I am awed. Moms who have to go to work by choice or by neccesity, and leave the care and responsiblity of their children in someone else hands for a while. That is a sacrifice. Moms who stay at home and sometimes see the same 4 walls for days on end, drowning in chores, crying, tantrums and so much more. The mother in Africa who has no food to feed her child but will walk miles and miles to find it. The mother in Iraq who holds her bleeding, wounded child dying in her arms and refuses to leave the child though she is still in danger. The mother who sends her child to war to fight in a battle that he or she may not come home from. The mother that leaves her child to fight that same war....that is sacrifice. The mother who gives her child to a couple who can not have one of their own. The mother who loses child after child from her womb and aches to hold a living breathing child in her arms. ALL of them are mothers, from different walks of life, different roads traveled yet all effected by the role of motherhood. Motherhood is the greatest gift to me but with that awesome gift comes great responsibility, sacrifice and a love undescribable

Happy Mother's Day......today and everyday.