SERVE DAILY VIEWPOINT
A Mother’s Love and Sacrifice by Casey Wood
When I was young, my family was not well off financially. In addition to not having much money, very little of our money was budgeted toward meeting the needs of our family. It was left to my mom to assure that our family of five had all of our needs met, from food to household supplies, to clothing, to entertainment and beyond on a budget of $100 per month. Even back in the 90s, stretching $1,200 a year to meet all of those needs was a nearly insurmountable trial. Despite that, my mom moved mountains to make sure we had everything we needed. She took part time jobs, stretched items out long beyond their expected life cycle, and went without her own needs. And she did all of this so incredibly well that I had no idea that we ever did without in the first place. As I got older and was better able to recognize the various challenges in our family and in our home, it
became impossible for me to not recognize the way that my mother put me and the rest of her children first. No matter the heartache she’s faced or the mountains she’s had to climb, my mom has always put her kids first. I am not alone in these experiences. Nearly every person in the history of the world has had a mother who has loved, accepted, and sacrificed for them. The dictionary defines mothering as treating someone with great care and affection. While not everyone has a special relationship with their biological mother, whether due to choices or to circumstance, everyone has someone in their life that can fit that definition. Each year for Mother’s Day, we have a special opportunity to celebrate those people in our lives who have chosen to love, support, teach, and nurture us through life. If I may, I’d like to take this opportunity to remind us all of a few reasons that we should appreciate the mothers in our lives. Mothers belong to a very small
group of people who can know every bad thing about us, and still love and accept us. Mothers are willing to go without genuine necessities to provide outrageous frivolities for their children. Mothers are willing to see how bad we are at different hobbies and still keep paying for lessons, classes, fees, or other expenses. Mothers are regularly willing to prepare a nice hot meal, and not get a single bite of it while it’s warm. Mothers will go to every match, game, or event, and watch us strike out, miss, fall, or otherwise fail, and still make us feel like an all-star after it’s all over. Mothers become experts on things that they don’t know or care about at all because we’re interested in them, and they want to help us. Mothers endure years of discomfort in pregnancy, nursing, and caring for us just so that we can tell them we hate them or say otherwise mean and hurtful things when we’re small (or even when we aren’t). Mothers put significant time and
effort into mending things, cleaning things, and caring for things that we won’t even recognize or appreciate until we’re on our own and have to do them ourselves. Mothers will answer our panicked phone calls in the middle of the night without skipping a beat because we’re on our own now and don’t know how to handle something. This month, as we celebrate the mothers in our lives, may we all take extra time to ponder, recognize, and appreciate them, and all the ways that they have blessed our lives, and to find a special way to say thank you. Whether it is through gifts, letters, words, service, or other means, our efforts to show our gratitude will be a small drop in the bucket to repay all that they have done and will continue to do for us. We would love to hear stories and experiences from our readers about the mothers in their lives! Please head over to servedaily.com/mothers and share them with us! (Wood is a Serve Daily contributor.)
Heroes Who Perform the Most Thankless Job in the World by Shellie Peterson
No one decides to become a mother so she can get recognition. The truth is, motherhood generally doesn’t come with accolades, awards or bonuses for good performance. You don’t collect a paycheck for it and you never get time off from it. Most of the time the rewards for motherhood are non-monetary but simultaneously priceless. There is no amount of money in the world equivalent to
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watching your child learn and grow, give you an unprompted hug, or tell you that you’re the best mom in the world (even though you know better). But still, making the transition from a successful full-time career to full-time mom who works from home whenever I get a minute was one of the hardest things I ever did. Recently, I had a particularly challenging morning when everything seemed to be going wrong. I thought to myself, “you know, it would really be
nice to just hear ‘thank you’ every once in a while.” That got me thinking, when was the last time I thanked my own mother for everything she’s done for me? Did I say “thanks” after she sacrificed sleep to nurse me back to health every time I got an ear infection as a child? Did I thank her when she stayed up all night to sew costumes for my sisters and I back when we sang and performed together? Did I show her my gratitude for holding me and letting me cry on
her shoulder after my first real breakup? Did I tell her thanks for the many times she drove me to my first job and back because I didn’t have a car? I can’t recall if I told her how much it meant to me when she would proofread my college papers or read my poetry and get teary-eyed because she was proud of me. So, to my own mom, I want to publicly say thank you for serving me. Thank you for giving me such a beautiful example of what motherhood means. Thank
you for putting your own aspirations and dreams on the back burner so you could devote your time to raising nine children. That’s a huge feat. And to all mothers, everywhere: Thank you for everything you do. Sometimes we forget to say it, but we appreciate the sacrifices you make. You may not know it yet, but you’re changing the world each exhausting, diaper-changing, shower-foregoing, love-giving day at a time. (Peterson is a Serve Daily contributor.)
