She Loves Me Like a Rock

My mom is a star. I’m only beginning to see how profoundly she’s influenced me. Here’s a short list of ways I’ve been affected by my mom.

As a teacher:
My first observation as a teacher was a disaster: 29 recommendations, 6 commendations. My post-observation conference with the supervisor was such a disaster that the superintendents and the union became aware of it. The supervisor was told to do another observation. My mom sat with me at the dining room table and helped me plan a lesson sure to dazzle a supervisor with something to prove.

As a friend:
When my heart got broken, my mom sat at the kitchen table with me while I poured out my heart and its many, many layers of brokenness. She told me a similar story about how a friendship of hers had ended. But all she ever said about the mean boy who broke my heart was that she always liked him. Fast-forward nine years, and the mean boy is still one of my best friends. I know the reconciliation he and I experienced was from God, but He used my mom to plant the seed that grew into forgiveness.

As a believer:
The soundtrack of my childhood was not Adventures in Odyssey or Amy Grant. Thank you, Mom, for introducing me to Paul Simon, Billy Joel and Elton John. I can’t hear Goodbye Yellow Brick Road without being transported to the hot, vinyl seats of a ’69 Chevy. I learned that faith is manifested in how you treat people and in how you handle adversity—it’s not a bumper sticker or a Janette Oke novel.

As a wife, maybe…:
My mother’s advice has always been, “Marry your best friend.” She and her best friend have been having fun for the past 40 years. My mother’s entire adult life has been spent with my dad. My adult life could not be more different. And even though the life she knows has been such a good one, she doesn’t pressure me to get married. One reason I can live so confidently and freely as a single woman is because my mother isn’t hurrying me.



All of us women have moments when we realize we’ve become our mothers. Here is one from my week.

When I was in elementary school, my mom sat with me at the kitchen table while I worked on book reports. My instinct was always to sloppily scrawl something across the cover, but she would slow me down with a ruler and an exhortation to “do it in pencil first.” This week my students were doing flow charts about hurricanes and I reminded them to “do it in pencil first.”

There are so many things I want to do and be in my life. At the top of the list is my desire to be a woman of influence—a woman like my mother.