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I realize that it is a holiday created by greeting card companies to make a buck.  I also am aware that Christmas has more to do with pagan ritual and Western consumerism than Jesus’ birth, but I love to celebrate it!  I think that any excuse to make a big deal about somebody is a good thing, so Mom, here is your big day!

I was reading about giving to the poor this morning (more on that at a later date) in Proverbs 19 when I remembered the classic “proverb-a-day” thing where you read whatever chapter in Proverbs that corresponds with the date.  Today is the 10th so I flipped to Proverbs 10 and saw that the first verse reads “The proverbs of Solomon. A wise son maketh a glad father: but a foolish son [is] the heaviness of his mother.”  I am not sure why Solomon affiliated his father with gladness and his mother with heaviness, but I know what that resonates with in my life.  As a man I remember that making the men in my life proud was always forefront and typically very difficult (if not impossible) to achieve.  Now, in reality they were likely quite proud of me, but I rarely new it because I rarely heard it from them.  It is as if the default with a man is presumed status quo and occasionally when something particularly noteworthy takes place they take notice (or get “glad”) and I get congratulated.  My Mother on the other hand was different.  She frequently sang my praises and told my that I was special and would do great things.  She raised me and my siblings on her own for several years after my Father died when I was still quite young.  During these years, my Mom kept her head up around us all day, every day.  She was almost always optimistic and upbeat and frequently emphasized what we were good at.  However, when we got selfish and acted out there crept in the heaviness that accompanied her disapproval.  At the time I did not understand the complexities of losing the life you hold most dear and having to continue the fight alone.  I did not understand any loss but my own.  Now however I understand that much of the heaviness of those moments grew from the tremendous weight that she carried.

Mom, I am proud of you!  You fought hard and look at where you got us!  I love you and hope that I helped give you the honor due on your day!

See this is probably not at all what was Solomon had on his mind when he wrote that.  God breathed special meaning as I read it and gave me deliverance from a burden I was unnecessarily carrying all these years!  Praise God! He frees me every day.