What is a Mother?

“Her children rise up and bless her; her husband also, and he praises her, saying: ‘Many daughters have done nobly, but you excel them all.’ Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain,but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised.” Proverbs 31:28-30

Somewhere between the youthful energy of a teenager and the golden years of a woman’s life, there lives a marvelous and loving person known as “Mother.”

A mother is a curious mixture of patience, kindness, understanding, discipline, industriousness, purity, and love.

A mother can be, at one and the same time, both “lovelorn counselor” to a heartsick daughter and “head football coach” to an athletic son.

A mother can sew the tiniest stitch in the material for that dainty prom dress, and she is equally experienced in threading through the heaviest traffic with a station wagon.

A mother is the only creature on earth who can cry when she’s happy, laugh when she’s heartbroken, and work when she’s feeling ill.

A mother is as gentle as a lamb and as strong as a giant. Only a mother can appear so weak and helpless, and yet, be the same one who puts the fruit jar cover on so tightly even Dad can’t get it off.

A mother is a picture of helplessness when Dad is near, and a marvel of resourcefulness when she’s all alone.

A mother has the angelic voice of a member in the celestial choir as she sings Brahms lullaby to a babe held tight in her arms; yet this same voice can dwarf the sound of an amplifier when she calls her boys in for supper.

A mother has the fascinating ability to be almost everywhere at once, and she alone can somehow squeeze an enormous amount of living into an average day.

A mother is “old-fashioned” to her teenager, just “Mom” to her third-grader, and simply “Mama” to little two-year old sister.

But there is no greater thrill in life, than to point to that wonderful woman and be able to say to all the world, “That’s my mother!”
- Fred Kruse