Looking Back

Mother's Day 2009.........

Saturday, Kendra and Craig and Emerson arrived just before noon.  Ken was gone to a golf outing with our son John in Stephensville Michigan so we decided to go to KFC for the free two piece meal.  We found when we got there that KFC couldn't keep up with the demand and stopped supplying the free meals.  We surrendered our coupons and were told we would get some back in the mail.  It didn't change our minds, we still had the same meal, the only difference was that we had to pay for it.  

We spent the afternoon together at Lauri's house and enjoyed each other's company.  Yesterday, Lauri hostessed, (Thank you, Lauri).  We had strip steak and burgers.  Everyone seemed to enjoy the meal immensely.  I'm not a steak lover so I enjoyed my burger.  Particpants in the day were Lauri and Elton and their four kids, Dad and Mary, Craig and Kendra and Emerson, Scarlen and Isaiah, and John and Kim and four of their five children.  It was a blessed day.  The best part was watching the cousins enjoy each other and watching our little fifteen month old express her darling personality.  Grandma had fun introducing her to bubbles.  Too bad it was so cold and windy.

Mother's Day always humbles me.  I know without a shadow of a doubt that I messed up plenty.  I do remember asking God over and over to bless that which I had right and negate the negative of anything I had wrong.  I also remember so enjoying the stage when my older children were in junior high and the early years of high school.  I hear now that they did some things I didn't know about which would have grieved me.  But God was gracious and didn't let me know that until they were beyond their unsettled young adult stages.  They kind of like to tell on each other and I think it is funny that at forty, give or take a few, there are some that still don't want us to know certain things.  One of my kids asked if I had had parties when I was young and my parents were gone and I honestly answered that I hadn't.  Another daughter said, "Mom was a goody two shoes".  The truth of the matter is that my friends and I were all cut from the same cloth.  We knew there were perimeters our God and our parents had set.  We tried to stay within those perimeters.  It wasn't being a goody two shoes, just obedient.  There was a greater sense of obedience in those days. I never had a curfew....didn't need one. One may say that was fear and there is some truth to that.  I always felt I just could not disappoint my parents.  No alchohol....didn't taste beer until I was 33 and in Korea.  No cop calls.  No tickets (though I could have had a hundred with my heavy foot) I pushed the envelope at times but made it through those years without a disaster.  I certainly was not perfect.....God forgive the sins of my youth.