This coming Sunday is Mother’s Day and everyone will be thinking about their mother.  I was very blessed to have a wonderful mother.  I always knew that I was loved and cared for.  She taught by example more than words.  Even though I always considered myself  “Daddy’s girl” I realize now that most of my core values came from her.  She never had an unkind word about anyone.  For example, when I was having difficulties understanding and getting along with my mother-in-law she just said,  “Well, Marge is just different.”  She kept to that opinion even when we talked about it 40 years later!

She was the source of my faith since she made sure I was baptized.  I was too young to remember but the story has always interested me.  My parents were living in Milwaukee where they had met and married right after World War II.  My dad was going to school and working to support my mother and me.  They had very little money, but they did have a very old car.  My mother was from a very small town in northern Wisconsin that was over 300 miles away. Her mother and brothers still lived there.  So my parents decided to drive there so my mother’s family could meet me and I could also be baptized at the same church where my mother was baptized.  Remember this was before fancy car seats, disposable diapers, air-conditioning, and the interstate.  A 300-mile trip with a seven-month-old baby during the month of August was an undertaking.  After several stops for an overheated radiator, they made it, but the car did break down and my dad had to take the train back to Milwaukee.  I’m not sure how my mother and I got back.  Anyway, I was baptized.  I feel that making sure I was baptized and later taken to Sunday School and on through confirmation were her greatest gifts to me.

Through baptism God gives us new life.  He delivers us from death and the devil and forgives our sin.  The Holy Spirit comes to us as we trust in his word and we are given salvation and eternal life.  This is the grace given through his son Jesus Christ.  I thank God for my mother and am so grateful for her faith and love.  Remember that God loves you unconditionally.

Nancy

Romans 6:4 “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”