Photo of author with her moms beside her, smiling.

Meet my moms. The one on the left has been my mom for 47 years, the other for 25. They’re both very easy to love.

Reason #1: My moms bake the best pies.

But their methods are not the same. One rolls a butter crust that might just mix with whole wheat flour. The other uses Crisco and uses a single shell for a perfect, flaky, double-shell crust. One bakes by feel, the other, by the book. A dollop of real whipped cream tops the pumpkin pie and crumbles of extra sharp cheddar top the apple pie. Both offer it à la mode.

They both bake the best pies. The pies make it easy to love my moms.

Reason #2: My moms work with all their might.

Their tasks are different, but what their hands find to do, they both do with all their might. With the fruit of her hands one mom plants a garden and provides food not only for her household but for her children’s households and for two farmer’s markets. My other mom holds the needle and scissors and her foot deftly pumps the sewing machine pedal. With the fruit of her hands she makes quilts and runners and patches the knees in her grandsons’ pants.

What their hands find to do both moms do it with all their might.

Reason #3: My moms love the hard to love.

Both moms have different difficult people in their lives. I don’t know all of them, but I know one well. Both moms have seen me at my ornery worst. I’d like to think that came 30 years ago when I was a moody teenager, but last month I was too mad and sad to give one mom a proper hug and good-bye after a three-hour drive together. Last week the other mom walked in on pity-party.

Can you guess what both moms said then, last week and last month? They both said, “I love you.”

Reason #4: My moms speak with kindness.

Both moms use their tongues to heal and give life. Their tone is different. One is more subdued and the other effusive. But both design their words to encourage and build up. Kindness, I shared before, has a firm core of truth and soft edges of grace. Both moms have told me no and asked me hard questions. But always the questions and no‘s are grace-laced. Plus, they are free with their thanks.

Both of these women infuse their words with kindness.

What Will Your Kids Say?

You are going to be what you’re becoming now, Dawson Trotman, the founder of the Navigators noted.

I bring it up because as I wrote these four reasons it’s so easy to love my mom and my mother-in-law, I kept asking myself, “What would my sons, or future daughter-in-laws, say about me?” My pies will never compete with grandmas’, but am I living today so that one day they might echo one of the other three?

Here’s the bottom line: I don’t deserve a thing for Mother’s Day. But God has graciously given me not one, but two praiseworthy moms.

Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,
    but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
 Give her of the fruit of her hands,
    and let her works praise her in the gates.

Proverbs 31:30-31 (ESV)

What makes your mom, or moms, easy to love?

Don’t save your praise. Comment it below instead.

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