A mother’s arms …

For many of the human beings ever born, one of the places which we’ve felt the most loved, most safe, and most happy have been moments wrapped in our mothers arms.

Even though my mom died more than four decades ago, one of my sharpest memories of her is a simple one. As a very young boy, one evening as my mother was watching television with the family I sat beside her, but being sleepy, I leaned against her and couldn’t keep from dozing off as she wrapped her arm around me. I remember the process of waking later that evening was a slow one … it seemed my eyes didn’t want to open as I could both hear her voice and the “vibration” of it as I lay against her, and thinking that was such a serene, peaceful, and content moment that I didn’t really want to fully awake to spoil it.

I was peaceful and safe in her arms.

Sometimes we’re not always aware of what all the loving arms of a mother do for us. An unknown source once shared the following story:

There was a teenager who didn’t want to be seen in public with her mother, because her mother’s arms were terribly disfigured.

One day when her mother took her shopping and reached out her hand, a clerk looked horrified. Later, crying, the girl told her how embarrassed she was. Understandably hurt, the mother waited an hour before going to her daughter’s room to tell her, for the first time, what happened.

“When you were a baby, I woke up to a burning house. Your room was an inferno. Flames were everywhere. I could have gotten out the front door, but I decided I’d rather die with you than leave you to die alone. I ran through the fire and wrapped my arms around you. Then I went back through the flames, my arms on fire. When I got outside on the lawn, the pain was agonizing but when I looked at you, all I could do was rejoice that the flames hadn’t touched you.”

Stunned, the girl looked at her mother through new eyes. Weeping in shame and gratitude, she kissed her mother’s marred hands and arms.

Those loving, sacrificial things mother’s do with their arms — their lives — are some of the things we recall on Mother’s Day. Laurel Biever, a therapist, summed up motherhood like this: “Motherhood is the ultimate reward and the ultimate sacrifice, all in the same breath.”

For all of the sacrifice, and those moments in loving arms, we wish all the moms out there a happy Mother’s Day.

Scotty