A Woman's Legacy

             This Sunday is Mother’s Day. My Mom has been gone for over six years now and since I’m not a mother myself, Mother’s Day is always a bittersweet time for me. However, I can’t discount the legacy that my Mom left behind.

            Mom and I were different in many ways. She was an extrovert, who never saw a stranger and could talk your arm off. I am an introvert and prefer to remain quiet and listen rather than speak. I love to read which often became a source of irritation to my Mother who wanted me to get up and do my chores.  Mom never went to college and only worked outside of the home briefly after my Father retired. I have three degrees and had various jobs from the time I was in high school until I retired a little more than a year ago.

            Though we had our differences, they do not diminish the impact that Mom had on me or my life. First, my Mom was a woman of faith. I didn’t realize how deep those roots were until I read her diary a few years ago.  Church and God were important parts of her life from an early age, and she passed that faith on to me.

            She and my Father were also examples of commitment. They were high school sweethearts who married a couple of weeks after she graduated and managed to stay married for over 60 years until his death. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t have disagreements. They did, but they were never serious enough that I questioned whether the marriage would survive. They had made a commitment to each other, and they remained faithful to it until the end.

            She also taught me to never give up. I was a 4-H member and one of my projects was Entomology – bugs! One year, I was preparing to take my insect collection to the State Fair but when the big day came, I went to check on the boxes that I had worked on for months. Somehow ants had gotten into the boxes and were all over my carefully preserved insects. I was ready to give up, but Mom wasn’t having it.  She insisted that I take each box apart (with her help, of course), clean each insect and reorganize the boxes. We made it to the fair on time, but only because of her insistence that I not quit.

            Finally, she also taught me what it means to care for and love your family. In addition to caring for her immediate family, after my grandfather died, she took great care of my grandmother, going to the nursing home almost every day.  When the grandkids came along, she and my father were instrumental in caring for them, teaching them, and just loving on them. Even after she was struck with Alzheimer’s, as my niece helped to care for her, Mom was caring for my niece’s baby.  Being a mom was one thing she never forgot.

            Whether you have children or not, whether you had a faithful mom like mine or not, there has probably been a woman in your life who made a lasting impression on you and helped to make you into the woman that you are today. You have that same opportunity to impact the women in your life in powerful ways.

            The Scripture is full of women who impacted their families and the world around them – some for good and some for evil. In each of those cases, they left a lasting legacy.

            The question is:  what kind of legacy will you leave? Will those who come behind you find you faithful, committed, one who keeps going despite obstacles, and caring and loving?  Will someone that you have impacted “rise up and call you blessed?”  I know that my Mom left a lasting legacy.  I only hope that I can do the same!

Proverbs 31: 30, 31