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Recently, I started writing about how Sunday morning on Mother’s Day started in our home, and now I’m going to continue unfolding the events of that blessed day (I say ‘blessed’ because it celebrates mothers as one of the greatest blessings in this life and because it was a gold mine of material for someone like me to write about).
This past Mother’s Day we arrived late to sacrament meeting due to a cobbling mishap in the morning. Being Mother’s Day, that meant the soft seats up front were filled with grandmothers and other maternal figures visiting for the weekend, which meant latecomers like the Lemons got metal seats in the back this week. We would quickly learn how this would turn out to be a huge blessing for several mothers in our ward, my wife being one of them (Stay with me, reader, it will all make sense soon enough).
To better explain – as we were leaving home this morning, one of our daughters said her tummy was hurting. Figuring it was little-kid-speak for just being hungry, we gave her a little something more to eat on the way to church and thought that would do the trick.
We were wrong.
Ten minutes after arriving and finding our row of metal seats in the back, that little girl made it clear she had other plans for that food besides keeping it in her tummy.
She threw it all up, and she did it with gusto and pizazz. She started by blasting it all over the lady in front of us, who happened to be her primary teacher. That woman quickly got up and ran out of the meeting. After soaking her primary teacher sufficiently, her next target was my wife and a couple of our other kids. As a nice touch to it all, she was freaking out loudly enough to turn most of the metal-seaters’ heads our way.
What happened next was both heartwarming and amusing.
The primary teacher who had been covered in…stuff…came running back in with a handful of paper towels. She hadn’t left because she was grossed out or to clean herself off, she had sprung to her feet so she could get paper towels for everyone else. Wow.
My wife also stood up to run out of the meeting with our little girl, and she was laughing! Not a slight chuckle or bemused smile, but a gut-busting laugh. I ran out to see what was wrong and found…nothing. Nothing was wrong. My wife was taking our daughter home and laughing all the way through the parking lot. This was apparently the third or fourth Mothers’ Day program she’s missed for similar reasons, and thought it was comical.
I listened to her laughter and her explanation about how sometimes that’s all you can do during times like this. After a few moments of her contagious happiness filling the air, I was in the parking lot laughing out loud with her as well. After they were all in the car and heading home, I went back into church to help the primary teacher and my other kids with the cleanup.
For the rest of that day, I kept remembering two mothers from that sacrament meeting – one covered in an unpleasant mess while she helped our family clean things up, and another mother laughing rather than getting upset at being covered in unpleasantness.
Each of the kids from these two women were watching and learning that day. Ironically, the most powerful lesson taught during that Mother’s Day sacrament meeting came from two ladies who weren’t even there…
…because they were being mothers.
