To the mom who made me Me!

Happy Mother’s Day, mamala!

Wow, I am blessed.  What a godly, gentle and guileless person you are.  What a good mommy you were to me when I was so little and you were so young.  I love that you always just wanted to be a mama.  I LOVE that I got to be first in making you a mom!  I love that there were 22 hand-sewn dresses waiting for my arrival, that you were so anxious to be a mommy you couldn’t stop that crazy exuberance of yours from preparing for me.

You taught me about heaven and end times (when I was four!) and the first two words I could ever spell were B-i-b-l-e and Oh, you can’t get to heaven without s-a-l-v-a-t-i-o-n because you sang me those songs over and over.   You made me cry telling me the story of Bambi and Roy Rogers’ stuffed horse, Trigger (housed, you informed me, in a Roy Rogers museum in Hollywood where you someday dreamed of going) and you made me listen to country music and though I eschewed it for years, I have come full circle and truly appreciate its place in my life now.  You told me where puppies came from and bought me the Christian book about sex called Almost Twelve when I was only ten.  But you only let me read 2 or 3 pages at a time, every few months, and it did end up taking me until I was actually almost 14 to finish it, but that doesn’t really matter since if that book  had been my only sex education, I still wouldn’t know what the heck was happening!

You taught me to cuss like a Christian.

“Oh, crap-a-dap!”

You were never too busy to stop and explore something fun.

I love how you are creative and so totally unpretentious. And I love how your life has been filled with you discovering new passions and finding new hobbies and you have just never gone dull.  There has always been something delightful and new to picque your interest.  I mean, you became an award-winning horse photographer after the age of 55 and had your work on magazine covers!  What a resourceful, inspiring, virtuous woman you are!  You are SO Proverbs 31!

You are long-suffering and always believe the best in everyone.  You let people walk on you ~  determined to win them over and though I advise you to tell them where to get off, you do, in fact, always win them over and there isn’t anyone I know who doesn’t love you.  And if there is anyone in the whole wide world who doesn’t love you?  I don’t even want to know them. Someday I hope I can be more like you, mamakins, because you are wonderful.

Mares eat oats and does eat oats
And little lambs eat ivy
A kid’ll eat ivy, too, wouldn’t you? 

We’d lie across the bed and sing this and laugh our heads off.  It was years before I even knew what I was singing.  And wasn’t that the point?

As if being a good mommy to me when I was young wasn’t enough,  you are my most cherished friend and confidante now.  You are my biggest cheerleader and when you nag me about overwork and taking care of myself and hold me accountable for making every effort to enter in to that Sabbath rest that remains (Heb. 4), I naturally rebel or pretend all is well.  But inside I am happy that there is a human being on earth who takes the time to actually care anything at all about me.  I love you, mom.  Thank-you.  Thank-you.  Thank-you.

Then

You dreamed of me.  You planned for me.  You wanted me.  And you have never given up on me.  And though I even know as you read this you would say to me, “Oh, Jeanie, I am not perfect.  I have a lot of faults,” and perhaps this is true, the only thing that really matters to me on Mother’s Day and every day is that you are PERFECT for me!  You were the only woman in the world God could trust to be my mom and I am grateful He knew…

Now

One of my favorite remembrances ever shall be that when we found out the Roy Rogers Museum had moved from California to Branson – just 45 minutes from your house, I got to take you to see Trigger (whom you’d actually seen ALIVE when you were a young girl…doing his tricks and carrying your beloved Roy Rogers).  And just before the museum closed down for good, together, we got to see all the things you’d told me about in my earliest memories (3 or 4 years old) and we stood there singing “Happy Trails to You” in the fan room, me at 50, you at 70-ish – our girlhood fancies intertwined…We are from so long ago, it is as if we have always been.  You are my mama and I am your baby girl, forever and always.

On my last birthday you wrote this in an email:

“You just can’t know how very, very happy I was when you arrived in October 1959. Wow! My Dream had come true!!”

I am among the most blessed women of the world.  I have such great treasure.  I am rich in a way that most people can only wish – to have my mom say words like these to me.

I love you, Norma J. Moslander, my mom.

J e a n i e

You have more than fulfilled the “prediction” in your high school senior yearbook, mom-ma!  You have pleased God.  It is certain.

“Give her the reward she has earned and let her works bring her praise at the city gates.”  Proverbs 31.31 NIV

7 thoughts on “To the mom who made me Me!

  1. You can tell how precious she is just by looking at her face, can’t you? I read, I agreed, I teared up in revelation, then I scrolled down a little further, my eyes did a quick search into the picture to see the face of this wonderful woman you write about, our mother. There it is. Look at that face! How comforting that is! –And probably with a little “missing her ” mixed in because I just gazed upon her & Dad as I drove away from them two days ago. Some people may have money, houses, and land, things that I do not have. But, you’re right, Jeanie. We are so rich in treasure – of a much more real kind. It cannot be appraised!

  2. Well said, little sister. Yes-I loved that shot of her face. It captures the kindness and gentleness we know her to have. You are so much like her, absent much of the snide and sarcastic bent I seemed to have gotten (from somewhere?…). She is a wonderful mom and we are so blessed. So, so blessed.

  3. I call her Mama Norma. She always knew when I needed a hug and just held me. She always was funny and such a joy to be around. She was the mom I needed when I was going through some rough times in Indiana. A woman of deep love for everybody. I miss her.

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