mama bear

my mama's been on an alaska adventure for the last few weeks. before she left we talked about how the trip would be. i asked her to look for whales for me and she replied, "i hope i see grizzly bears!" this cracked me up. something about my five foot mama trying to see one of the largest mammals in north america...a wild grizzly. ah! you gotta love her. and then a little later it hit me. oh my gosh! i know where i get it from.

its sweet living with jeff because when things happen in the family, like we get a funny email from ry in china we can laugh about it together or when my mom calls and does something cute we can pass it on to one another.


i remember when i was little and my mom was in the hospital and my grandma was taking care of us. my grandma & grandpa would drive us to visit her. my grandma gave us travel games to amuse us along the ride. my favorite though was the one she had us play where we looked out the windows and tried to find the alphabet going letter by letter, each person taking a turn. i remember missing my mom and wanting to see her. i sat on grandma's bed and wrote her a poem,

"as the sun shines over the sea so my mom looks over me."

it might look small here, but with my eight year old handwriting on the learning to write grade school paper with three lines going across the margin, it filled the entire page. i worked really hard on that little gem...my dramatic side already in full swing imagining my life without my mom, how much i needed her, tearing up to myself, and then mad praying for God to heal her so she could be my mama again.

my prayer was answered.


sometimes when i am not good to myself and i feel the torrent of all my inferiorites i hide myself deep inside my bear cave. slowly, she enters. she reaches into that part of me and reassures me that is it okay for me to be me today

that i am loved. she fills me with the goodness and light that i feel separated from and reminds me that it lives in me. "That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed everyday. For our present troubles are quite small and won't last very long. Yet they produce for us an immeasurably great glory that will last forever! So we don't look at the troubles we can see right now; rather we look forward to what we have not yet seen. For the troubles we see will soon be over, but the joys to come will last forever." 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 (nlt)