In Memory of My Best Mentor, My Mom

It's raining today in Tennessee, and I guess that fits the mood around my parent's home. It's sometimes nice to see how God creates weather to match what you feel like you are going through. I won't be able to write much, but it is still too new, too hard...as I wrote in a previous post, breast cancer is a terrible thing. Yesterday, it claimed one more victim. My mom, Carol. What is victorious about this is that Jesus welcomed one more person into His arms, and I'm so thankful for the peace that comes with knowing exactly where she is. I don't have to worry about her being afflicted with cancer any longer, about being in pain--none of that matters anymore, because she's healed and is perfect.

I'm named after my mom (my first name is Carol), and I am her oldest daughter. There is some amount of responsibility that I feel because of those two things, and I hope that I wear her name proudly. Micayla's "c" is in honor of my mom's and my name as well. I'm not sure how the days and weeks will go by--I'm still in shock, even though we knew it was happening. As I cried tears of sadness last night with Hudson next to me, I thought of all the things that I wished that my mom was going to be at in the next months and years to come. I can't believe that my mom won't be here to see Micayla's first Christmas, to hear her first word, to see if we have any other children, to answer the phone when I want to know how to make her mac n'cheese recipe, to give me a hug each time I walk through the door when we come to visit. These thoughts are so hard for me...yet I know that God is good, and He'll sustain me through the days and weeks ahead.

So, to honor my mom, here's what you should know about her: she loved her husband and daughters selflessly, she was compassionate, considerate, and full of optimism. She had hope knowing that if she didn't survive this, she knew exactly where she was going. She loved her son-in-laws as if they were her own sons. She wanted us to have what we needed growing up, but didn't provide everything for us. She wanted us to be educated, to have what we wanted in life, but always wanted us to yearn for something more as well--to never be satisfied with life, but to always be content. She loved jokes that a 5-yr-old would tell her, and she loved her grandchildren beyond belief. She was a woman who read her Bible in the last few months, just to see what else it had to say about where she was going. She taught us each to cook, to clean, to sew, to be servants to our families, to be kind to others. She taught all of us how to be "moms." And even though my youngest sister isn't a mom yet, she already has everything that my mom taught all of us in order to parent her future children. She was worried about how we all would be when she was gone, and yet, she knew that we would all, eventually, be okay.

I was blessed to have one of the best, if not the best, mother in the world and I already miss her terribly. She was, and will continue to be, the person that I want to imitate to my own daughter the most. I love you Mom.