"There isn't a thing you don't have to teach them."

"There isn't anything you don't have to teach them," says my friend, Cathy, of raising boys.  And this is good advice.  Like, why do I have to tell them they can't pee in the trash can?  Or make a zip line out of bungee chords in the back yard.  Or lick things.  When you become a mother you are well aware of all the big things ahead of you--potty training, reading, driving, tying shoes.  It's all the little things that you don't see coming. 

My mom taught me how to sing.  Not the do's and the re's and the mi's or how to stand up and breathe from your diaphragm.  But how to pick a song you love and work on it and sing it for someone.  How to make the words sound like real words and the notes sound like your own.  I got to sing alongside her for many years in our church choir, not to mention my aunt and my sisters, until she and Dad moved to Pittsburgh four years ago.  Singing a duet with my mom is still one of my greatest joys, her the alto, me the soprano.  It's as if God knew exactly what He was doing when He placed me in her womb.  :)

When Kevin and I joined a new church a couple of years ago, I was hesitant to join the choir.  Despite all that music has meant to me for so long, I couldn't imagine singing without my mom next to me.  It had always been such a family thing.  But it would have been a disservice to all that has taught me not to try, so I showed up one Wednesday night to give it a shot.  In a room full of strangers, I was placed next to a lady that reminds me so much of my aunt it's spooky sometimes (a little nod from God that I am not alone, I like to think) and I began to sing.  And before long, I realized that all my mother had taught me about singing during all those duets wasn't so much about the two of us, her and me, but the One above.

"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb...your eyes saw my unformed body.  All the days were written in your book before one of them came to be."  Psalm 139:13, 16

This is what God does through a mother.  He sees the plans laid out for us and carefully places in just the right hands.  The hands that know the lessons we need to learn.  Did my mom know all that she was teaching me as she was doing it?  I don't know.  But God did.         

This Mother's Day I get to sing a little song with Michael in church.  I will sing and he'll play the piano along with me.  I hope he has a good time doing it.  I hope he's not too nervous and has a great experience.  I hope he likes it so much he'll want to do it again.  And I hope, twenty years later, he'll look up and have learned something from it, not just because we did it together, but because it brought him closer to the One above. 

Happy Mother's Day.
XOXO....Kelly