Day 55

Baby Steph with her beautiful mom and awesome dad.

Forty something years ago yesterday, my mom was born.

I love my mom. She is an amazing person who has overcome more challenges in her life than most people outside of our family will ever know about.

I didn't always feel that way about my mom, though. For almost a decade she and I butted heads almost daily. We were exactly alike in some ways, and exact opposites in others. We would see things that we disliked about ourselves in the other and then there were other things that we would just not understand at all about each other. I used to think that there would never be a time when my mom and I would get along. 

Then I moved out.

It was an amazing transformation. Without all of the small day to day confrontations, my mom and I started to get along. 

The real change came when I moved over to Denver, Colorado to nanny. I had moved away from home before then, but the furthest had been 200 miles. Denver is over 500 miles away from home. At first everything was going very well while I was there nannying. I still missed my mom, but when we talked on the phone it was more like talking to a very close friend. Then things started turning sour with the family I was working for. I no longer felt very welcome in their family and I really missed my own family. My mom quickly reserved a condo in the mountains close to Denver and began to make flight plans to come visit me for a week. A week before my mom was coming out to visit me, the family I was with decided we weren't a good match and gave my my two weeks. As I called my mom in tears to tell her, she comforted me and told me that she would make the 8 hour drive there by herself, spend the weekend with me at the condo as planned, and then spend the rest of the week by herself at the condo, which was too far away from me to visit on a daily basis. She said she would do that so that she could make the drive back home with me as I moved out at the end of that week.That weekend with my mom was wonderful. We just hung out, ate junk food, watched movies, and shopped in some of the ski towns in the area.

 At the end of the weekend when I was going back to nanny for my last week, I realized that my mom was seriously my friend now, too. The family that I was working for said that they really wanted to meet my mom. At their insistence, I arranged for my mom to come and meet them and spend some time with us one day that week. I expected them to give her the same warm and open reception I had received when I first arrived. I was horrified when my sweet mom came into their home and there was no warm reception whatsoever. She was left to sit by herself on the couch for an hour while I took care of the kids, and their mother took care of what could only be gravely pressing matters around the house. Like, you know, dishes and stuff. There was no attempt to show interest in this amazing woman who raised me. My mom took me to lunch that day, and as we left I had to fight back tears. It had taken someone else showing such disrespect to my mother for me to realize how much I do respect her and how highly I esteem her. As we were heading back to my job after lunch, I finally did begin to cry as I told my mom that I wanted to quit right then and tell them exactly how disgusted I was with their treatment of my mother. My mom admitted that she was very surprised by the reception she was greeted with. But her true character showed when she told me that she expected me to stay out the week with them, because I had made a verbal agreement to do so, and I would honor that. While there has always been some part of me that has regretted not sticking up for my mom in that situation, I do feel that staying out my agreed time there was my own way of honoring the way that my mom raised me.

My mom is an incredible person. I look up to her more than I could find a way to say. Actually, that's why this post is a day late. I've spent the last 3 days trying to figure out how to put my mom into words. I finally decided that story attests more to her Christ-like love than any of my plain and inadequate words ever could. But I want to try and help you to get to know a little bit more about one of the greatest gifts my Heavenly Father has ever given me.

My mom is an adventurer. She loves skiing and learned how to do so by following her brothers off the beaten slopes when she was young. As long as I can remember, she's had a big jar that she's put all of her spare dimes into. When the jar is full, she cashes them in to get a season ski pass. She can't do the crazy moguls and stuff that she used to anymore, but she loves to take my 3 year old cousin on the slopes whenever she can. 

She loves to be on the go. Recently, my parents celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary by taking a trip to Hawaii. Most people would spend that vacation quietly relaxing on the beach, soaking up the sun, and slowly perusing the main tourist stops. Not my mom. She spent the trip taking ambitious hikes up incredible mountains and speed walking from one destination to another. 

She loves little kids, especially babies. I have seen her walk up to strangers and start talking to them just so she can play with their baby. The kids across the street think of her as family. She works as an aide during the school day at the same elementary school that I work at after school. 

She is an example to me, and many others, spiritually. Before I turned 18, my mom and I would go to church together every week. Now that I've moved on to a singles ward, my mom goes by herself to the family ward every single week. I know that this is not easy for her. In fact, at times it is very difficult. But she has found a way to make a positive out of things. She looks around for opportunities to serve. She'll find mothers with young children who are also there alone and go over to help them during sacrament meeting.

She loves my dad. When I was growing up, my parents each had their own recliner in the front room. Then, about 5 years ago, I came home to find the recliners exchanged for one reclining love seat. When I asked them why they made the change, they told me it was because they felt too far apart in the recliners.  

She is daring. She went parasailing behind a boat in Acapulco. She was the one to get me putting my hands up on roller-coasters when I still had to stand on my tip-toes to be tall enough to ride on them.

She is ambitious. When you are hiking with her, don't plan on a leisurely stroll, at least not with her by your side. She'll meet you at the top of the mountain,or wherever the hike ends. 

I could write a whole book just about my mom. I got many of my greatest strengths from her. I am so very proud to say that she is my mom.

Happy birthday, mom. I really do love you.

Thank you.