Honor Your Mother

{sidebar id=1}He was about 30 years old, and he had this one particular oddity. He had never asked a girl out. I asked him why, and basically it came down to fear.

His predicament caused me to examine my own life. I wondered, “Where did I get the guts to ask a girl out?” I was no more special than he, yet I had a confidence he lacked. Where did it come from? As I look back through my life, it seems like that confidence was always there. So where did it come from?

I give a lot of the credit to my mother. I know that as a baby, my mother loved me. She cared for me and coddled me. I’m sure she dressed me up and put me on display. She was proud of her little boy, and that rubbed off on other family members. That put me in a family cocoon of love and support. And here’s what I think. I think putting a child in an atmosphere like that is like giving him an IV of confidence.

So I want to thank my mom today for the confidence she instilled in me from day one. Today is my mother’s birthday, and since Ephesians 6:2 tells me to honor my mother, I want to do that by connecting a few dots. As I look at some of the things I’ve done in my life, I see direct connections to the things my mother did when we were growing up.

I remember Mom reading to us kids at bedtime. We loved it, and she did it often. Is it any wonder that I spent hundreds of nights reading to my own kids at bedtime?

When we were old enough, Mom took us all to the library, and we got our own library cards. I picked up a love of reading and a love of libraries from my mother. And I’ve tried to do the same with my own kids, who all have their own library cards. At one time my mom was the librarian at our elementary school. I learned the value of volunteering from my mother. When my own kids toddled off to school, is it any wonder that I joined the parent-teacher organization?

As I write this now, I remember watching my mom type on her old manual typewriter: click, click, click…ding! Click, click, click…ding! She was a letter writer and a pen pal. She wrote stories from her life. She always had a nice supply of typing paper; and do you remember carbon paper? And then she bought us kids our own typewriter to play with.

How did I end up with a desire to write? I think it goes back to my mom and all the time she spent at her old typewriter.

I can trace my love of family photos back to my mom. She made these big photo albums, the kind where you had to glue the little black corners in to hold the pictures. And we took a lot of pictures! I’ve done the same for my family. We have albums full of pictures of our kids growing up, as well as dozens of framed photos on the walls. And I trace it all back to my mother.

How did I end up in Christian radio? I have many fond memories of my mother playing Christian programming on a radio she kept on top of the refrigerator.

My mother also got me interested in tape recording and editing. At one time she volunteered to dub sermon tapes for people. We had a tape duplicator at our house, and I enjoyed figuring out how it worked and messing around making tapes of my own. There were always plenty of blank cassettes to experiment with!

Like I said, my mother instilled a lot of confidence in me, but we also learned to do humble tasks. I remember hours spent cleaning the church. It’s a strange combination, confidence and humility. Often it’s led me to cleaning the toilets for an organization of which I was a leader. It goes back to the influence of my mother, for whom no task was too humble.

My mother opened our home to young people who needed a place to stay for a while to get their life on track. That set the example for me, and we have done the same thing in our home. Some people can’t imagine doing that, but I can because I saw my mom do it.

And my mom has done many things that I have not done, at least not yet. But her example is with me, and who knows what the future holds?

At one time growing up we lived in a house with a large basement. Mom decided to use it to give away free clothes. People from all over town brought clothes to our house, and Mom sorted them out in the basement. Then anyone who wanted to could come and get them. It was sort of like Goodwill, except free.

Mom always had a passion for helping senior citizens. I remember her dragging us kids to visit old folks, taking them cookies and treats. And she still has a heart for the older folks, which now includes Dad!

Now how about you? Can you look back and connect the dots between how you turned out and the influence of your mother? Why not choose the best of the bunch and let your mom know? It’ll touch her heart, and you’ll be following the wisdom of Ephesians 6:2 which says, “Honor your…mother.”

Comments?

E-mail me: dougapple@wave94.com.

May God bless you today! With Apples of Gold…I’m Doug Apple.

This article originally published on November 26, 2007.

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