2009 Old Atlanta Rd.

Griffin, GA 30223

770-227-6169

Sunday May 11, 2008

            Reflecting on life with my Mother for this article led me to an interesting conclusion --- there is no one big thing that stands out in my mind about my Mother.  I can't point to one event or memory or occurrence that just catches the essence of who she was and of the impact she had on my life.

            Mama was a conglomeration of all sorts of little things, little things that individually were not especially noteworthy but when put together, they became a masterpiece.  Although she was an excellent cook she was never featured in Southern Living or Good Housekeeping.  My guess is that you could find somebody that could beat her at any one dish she fixed; it was the totality of her culinary work that made her exemplary.  Her cooking exceeded its taste; how well I remember a Cream Cake she made long after she'd gotten too sick to be in the kitchen but she made it for my birthday.  And the time that we had my favorite meal --- roast beef, yellow rice and gravy, to celebrate me making the Fayette County Junior High football team.  Or the brownies and cheese straws that we carried on vacation.

            She was an encourager and also a disciplinarian.  I remember her making me work on my first sermon for Youth Sunday when I was in the 9th grade.  My "good enough" wasn't good enough for Sunday morning so she demanded that I stay at it.  She cried along with me when I didn't make a team and she would sit and watch me standing on the sidelines when I did.  She laughed along with me when I broke the color barrier by borrowing Freeman Shropshire's mouthpiece in a football game after I'd left mine at home that morning.  It was a small step toward integrating society but I played my part and so did Freeman.

            Mama would have never made a comedian but she could have been a comic writer or TV shows.  To her, the world was a wonderful, funny place and she loved to laugh at the absurdities and silliness of life.  She could laugh at herself as well as at others.  Again, I don't remember any one joke or story tat would leave people rolling in the floor but I do remember that she was most often chuckling at or about something.

            What of faith?  She never really sat me down and had an in-depth talk about salvation or commitment to Christ.  But there were a jillion such little conversations along the way and those thoughts and concepts were interwoven into the fabric of everyday life.  I realize that I "caught" my Mother's faith more that I was "taught" it.  Teach it she did but not through conventional means of "sit down and listen up."  So it was well with the lessons of life and living, of applying the Faith to the realities of daily life.  Her approach, though effective, would probably never be written up in some great parenting book.

            On this Mother's Day, remember that a successful life, whether it is as a Mother or Father or as a neighbor and a Christian, is not defined so much by the one big, noticeable thing as it is the little things that become the totality of a life well lived.  Sometimes we don't see the masterpiece that is being painted right in front of our very eyes; it takes a few years and little reflection to really grasp the truth and beauty of it all.  Happy Mother's Day!