My heart swells when I hear the excitement in my elated daughter’s voice, saying, “Oh, Mommy! Mommy!” She can also cause my heart to ache, while crying out those same words when she is in pain.

She asked me a few weekends ago which name I prefer to be called: Mom? Mama? Or Mommy?

I told her “Mommy.”

We had just had a girl’s weekend together, as our son Elliot was in Mexico on a mission trip and Garrett and Paul went camping and fly-fishing together. We cleaned out closets, re-organized, shopped, ate at Wendy’s, played badminton, swam and watched Little Women together. It was a charmed weekend.

Ten years ago today I was crying out those exact words. “Oh, Mommy, Mommy! Do you really have to go?” as my Mom left this life, after a long battle with cancer.

I read the Love Chapter this morning:

Love …
Trusts God always
Always looks for the best
Never looks back
Keeps going until the end

My Mom was a saint. She loved deeply and was a model of hospitality (see APRON and MY MOM, MILLIE posts) to so many around her.

The smile on her face and the gentleness she had toward others was rare. The concern she had for the sick was beautiful, as I remember a neighbor who had cancer and how Mom would take food to their family, and sit with the dying woman.

Mom took the Word to heart and lived out I Corinthians 13. She fought the good fight up until the very end.

Ten years later, today, I am reminded not only of my Mom’s passing and her gift in my life, but that I have been handed another very special gift right now.

The gift of “today.”

(Photos: (very top) me and my daughter, Abby; my beautiful Mom, Millie, and her granddaughter, Kayla; some of our first garden crops this year, another reminder of my Mom and her love for the garden.)

For the record, I’d better tell you that the names that my kids call me the most are: Madre’, Moblo, and sometimes even Mother! They have witty personalities like their Padre’.