Happy Mother's Day!

A wealth of emotions run through my soul every year at this time. It is on Mother's Day when I think of my mother who died when I was 22 years old from cancer. My mind and heart dwells on the woman my dad remarried and who I now think of as mother, a friend, and in some ways my very soul mate.

I was so richly blessed to have the mother I did. It was her face I saw every morning when I woke up and it was her beautiful face I saw when I was tucked into bed at night. My mother brought joy, laughter, history, the love of music, and a thirst for continual knowledge. My mother installed in each of her children valuable characteristics we hold close to our hearts. I knew God lived because my mother knew God lived. I also knew when my mom knelt to pray God heard her morning, evening and silent prayers. Above all, I knew and my siblings knew, mom loved dad and dad loved mom!

After my mom died, another remarkable, feisty, humorous, compassionate and spiritual woman entered our lives named, Francine Smith Swanson Larsen. The world may label Fran as my stepmother, but I call her 'MOM' (or if you look at mom upside down it spells, 'WoW!)! This precious angel may not have rocked me to sleep at night, but she has wiped away my tears. She was with me when I married Lynn. One mother set my foot on a certain pathway and the other mother is making sure I stay on that straight and narrow path.

Before Fran and dad got married, our family size consisted of five. Our family doubled in size and blessings when mom brought with her four amazing daughters and one remarkable son. Our family unit is now eleven!!!! All nine of us know our mother believes in God and that she loves God. We also know that God hears our mother's morning, evening and silent prayers as she petitions her pleas to God. All nine of us know mom loved dad and that dad was completely enthralled and in love with mom!!!

I am so blessed on this eve before Mother's Day to ponder and to be blessed by two extraordinary women in my life who I call, 'MOM'! I walk(ed) and talk(ed) with angels on earth and I call them 'mom'! No angel in heaven could be as beautiful or exemplary as my mom(s).

I never had the chance to meet Lynn's mother. She died from cancer before Lynn and I were married. From the pictures I've seen and stories from my father-in-law, her children and friends, she too, was admired and loved by all who knew her. Lynn's mother was God-fearing. She had a voracious appetite and love for music, literature and gardens. Lynn's mother's proudest achievement was her five beautiful daughters and two handsome sons. My mother-in-law's daughters (my sisters-in-law) radiate their mother's image to me every day by their kind hearts and benevolent love towards their own families and to complete strangers. In my sisters-in-law, my brother-in-law, and in my husband's eyes and mannerisms, I see and love Lynn's mother!!!

To our mothers and to all the women in our lives who are mothers or will eventually be mothers and who holds destiny's future in their hands, Happy Mother's Day!