I remember when I was a little child and looking down at my chubby little hands all soft and dimply, and seeing them held in, what I now realise where slightly more worn hands of my mother. I remember wishing I could grow up and have hands just like her, I thought as most children do that my mother was the most beautiful woman in the entire world right down to her fingertips. Now as an adult I look down at my own hands and recognise the same prominent veins that the doctors just love come IV time, and the same worn lines along my fingers. I don’t have her perfect non acrylic nails, and her hands are much smaller now then my own, but still the similarities are what make me smile, especially as I hold the chubby fingers of my own children and watch those hands little hands seemingly grow before my very eyes. I know now it really wasn’t her hands or her tiny waist, or her cheek bones which made my mother beautiful and gives her the same glow today in my eyes that she held when I was once a child. The things that make her beautiful are the memories of the all the baking and cooking done by those hands for little to no thanks, or the innumerable amount of times she cleaned up messes I left behind long after I had forgotten them, and the endless instances her gentle hands became firm not out of anger (though that sometimes too) but out of necessity, knowing that punishment is a just as an important form of love for children as cuddling if you wish to raise them into responsible adults. These same hands that wiped away the tears that ran down my cheeks caused from scrapped knees to broken hearts. And most importantly those those amazing hands that clasped together in countless prayers upon worn out knees spoken to the Saviour for my sake. These are the things that make my mother beautiful these are the things I now strive for in my own life. These are the words I hope my own children may say of me one day. I was blessed to have a mother who loved me not just the best way she knew how, but the trusting that the Lord of her heart and, the maker of the stars, the planets, and her precious children, could show her a much better way to love then her own. Thank you mom and all the other mothers out there who know the best way to raise your children, is on bended knee to God.
