Does Motherhood lead to danger and suspense--Lenora Worth

All this week, the authors of Love Inspired are sharing about motherhood. You know--the joys, the thrills, the spills, the headache pills. And in my case today, the suspense of it all!

Being a mother can be suspenseful. When my daughter was young, we had to move across the country. I was driving the Chevy Blazer, loaded with plants, a turtle in a dishpan of water and my daughter. My husband was up ahead in a U-Haul truck. He told me (this was before cell phone days) that if I needed him to flash my head lights. We'd been an hour out, when I looked in the rear-view mirror and say a giant grasshopper hovering on a fern leaf right behind my head. Not just any grasshopper--but what we call a Georgia Thumper. Ugly and big. I didn't say anything to my daughter but I immediately starting flashing my light. My husband pulled over and came to the window. "What is it?" he said. We'd only been on the road about an hour. "There is a Georgia Thumper in here," I replied. "And I'm not driving across the country with him."

My husband managed to get the big ugly grasshopper out and sent him back toward the state line. My daughter told me, "Mom, bugs are our friends. I don't know why you're so scared." I didn't have the heart to tell her we'd probably brought along a few lizards in our fern, too. But much later as it got dark outside, her bravery seemed to end. She pushed down in her seat and finally said on a wail, "I want outta here."

So did her mother. I also remember one night when my son was young and a group of boys were sleeping over. But we had some weird neighbors like the ones on that movie "The Burbs." So we all lay down on our stomachs in the dark and stared out the bay window, watching a strange white van that kept creeping by the burb house down the street. In all the excitement, I felt a hand on my back very near my bottom. I said "Uh, whose hand is that?" One of the boys, thinking he was holding onto a buddy, said on a low whisper "Sorry, Miss Lenora."

Ah, the drama, the suspense of being a mother. You never know what's around the corner. Spilled milk or water balloon fights. Your son's friend swimming in suspenders and shorts or a group of boys driving up in a pick-up with their own version of a hot tub in the truck bed. Your shy well-behaved daughter getting into a cat fight behind the bleachers at a football game. Never a dull moment, being a mother. But you also get pretty hand-made cards that you keep forever and coffee mugs that make you smile. You get long phone calls where you put on your counselor hat and short phone conversations where you know you've overstepped your bounds.

Being a mother is the toughest job of all. It doesn't hurt to have a little covert training. Because we know that a mother will fight for her children to the finish. And then some. Happy Mother's Day. And if you want to read some other cute Mother's Day stories, you can follow Lyn Cote and others on e-harlequin at:
http://community.eharlequin.com/forums/love-inspired/humorous-family-stories-lyn-cote
or go to the Craftie Ladies of Love Inspired blog at: http://craftieladiesofromance.blogspot.com
We'll be posting around the Internet all week long! We'll be mothers forever!

A different kind of Thanksgiving--Lenora Worth

This will be a new kind of holiday for my husband and me. We're empty nesters now and since all of our family lives away, we will be alone on Thanksgiving. But we don't mind. We stay in touch with our two children and hopefully they will both be home for Christmas. We've decided rather than cooking, we'll go out and eat and maybe go to a movie. It will be nice to spend a quiet day together. We also have New Orleans Saints football on that day. They are playing the Dallas Cowboys. Any predictions on who might win? I'm cheering for the Saints, of course.

It's bittersweet to realize we have no one else with us on this holiday, but we did our job. We raised our children to the best of our abilities and now they are out there on their own. And while we'll miss relatives who are far away, we know we are loved. We've had several invitations to join others and we're blessed with good friends. But the idea of not fretting about cooking, cleaning and making sure everyone is happy is very appealing. There is something to be said for a quiet holiday where we reflect on our blessings, consider our ways and send up prayers for those we love. We are blessed. And that is the real Thanksgiving gift.

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope wherever you are, you know that you are loved and appreciated.

Dad, the story teller

I remember as a child listening to my father read to us, both from the Bible and the plethora of story books on our shelves. He has a certain intonation, a gentle inflection that brought the words to life for me. I can picture him sitting there on the bed, with his thick fingers delicately turning the pages. He was the one who told me about God in a way I could understand, showing unconditional love both in the passages he read and the time he spent with me.
Fast forward a few decades to the arrival of my own two children. Somehow I do not see my father enough, anymore. The days are filled with business and though we live in the same town, our lives travel down different roads. Imagine my surprise when I first read to my own children, and found that I used the same phrasing and inflection that my father used with me, trying to wrap the words in the same web of warmth that he did. My daughters were caught up in the same storytelling web that I had been as a child.
So was it the stories? The voice? Or the fact that my father took the time out of his always busy days to read to me? Probably a little of everything. The fact is I will always hear my father’s voice, reading the Bible or the magical stories of “the great gray green greasy Limpopo River” and the Giant Jam Sandwich and though the stories have faded, his voice will not. Thank you, Dad.