An Ode to Mothers
Children need their father's strength, his steady hand and firm voice, and their mother's warmth, her quiet care and gentle nurture.
A mother's work shapes her children. Whatever they become, her faithful labor plays a central part.
That work often looks small. Simple moments, barely noticed, carry weight.
A mother teaches her children to be fair, to share their toys without grabbing what isn't theirs, to be generous but just. Those lessons grow into a backbone no bribe can bend.
How many crooked politicians had good mothers?
Maybe a few. If so, they dishonor her. But I'd bet most never learned those simple lessons, spoiled, unchecked, and left to drift.
Mothers build something deeper than lessons.
Men raise walls and roofs; women make them into a home.
A home is more than wood and stone. It's warmth, the place you come back to when you're tired and beaten, where memories are planted and traditions bloom, a shelter, an anchor, an oasis in a dry and weary world.
No other place is like home, because no other place was made by your father and mother for you alone.
Mothers are the heart of that work, shaping empty rooms into a place that nourishes and restores.
Paul told Titus to remind older women to teach the young: to love their husbands, their children, and their homes. He called them "keepers of the home," the ones who make a house a refuge.
Mothers hold us close. They kiss our bruises. They cook the meals we love. They sing us to sleep.
It's quiet work, and the world rarely praises it, but it is no small thing, and it is glorious.
Happy Mother's Day!