Mother’s Day Letter

I wrote my mom a Mother’s Day letter. I wasn’t able to be there to read it to her in person so I read it to her over the phone. I cried as I read it to her. Here is what I wrote.

Mom,

The longer I am alive and the longer I experience being a dad and watching Elizabeth be a mom, the more I appreciate you. I see now more than ever what you did for me and for our family. I appreciate you;
for the countless hours you spent with us attached to you when we were babies.
For changing my dirty diapers.
For playing with me and teaching me how to talk and laugh.
For making me your life and not a career or money.
For enduring potty training with me.
For breast feeding me.
For letting me sleep in your bed.
For creating a warm and comfortable home to grow up in.
For changing years worth of my wet sheets in the middle of the night and not acting frustrated about it.
For making sure I never went hungry.
For homeschooling me.
For being willing to look weird in order to keep us sheltered from the nastiness of the world.
For helping to guide me through the awkward years of adolescence.
For helping me know how to act around girls.
For making me wash my face and brush my teeth and for making sure we were clean…and for pinching blackheads off my nose and face even though i hated that.
For making sure we didn’t walk around looking like idiots and for dressing us nice.
For showing me how to garden and grow flowers and letting me have an herb garden.
For being my source for common sense when I need it.
For being tough on me where you knew I needed it.
For showing love to me when you knew I needed it.
For crying with me (those two times) when you knew I needed it.
For laughing with me (or at me).
For not being afraid to say no to me.
For disciplining me.
For buying me my first pair of Birkenstock’s.
For staying with Dad and loving him when it was easy and hard (because I know what that is like more now too).
For keeping the finances (I know it is a pain!)
For 23 years of constantly buying groceries for me.
For finding ways to make money when we needed it.
For always giving to me first before you gave to yourself.
For going shopping with me. (I loved that!)
For teaching me photography.

But more than anything else I am thankful that you have a faithful and authentic love for Jesus Christ. More than anything else about you I know you love Jesus and that it is all because of Jesus that we have anything good to say about our past.
I thank the Lord for you Mom. I wish I could be with you today, even just long enough to give you a hug and smell the distinct “Mom” scent that you have and feel that “tap-tap” you give me on my back every time I hug you. I miss you very much, but it has been a good thing to think back about what a great mom you are to me. I hope my sons will feel the same about me as a dad someday.
I love you very much. I look forward to shooting the next wedding with you soon!

Your oldest child.