Mothers

With yesterday being Mother's Day I just wanted to say a few words about mothers. I am feeling particularly grateful to my mother and wanted to share that with everyone. I do apologize for everyone else in the world, you just don't have as wonderful, incredible, amazing, loving, friendly, nice, helpful, loved, beautiful, and all around great Mom as I do. I don't mean to rub it in, but my Mom is pretty much the greatest Mom in the world!

But enough about how lucky I am to have a Mom like mine, I just wanted to spend a second talking about the things I have learned from my Mom. One of the most important things in the world I have learned from my Mom, how to get, have, and keep a testimony of the God the Father and our Savior and his Atonement. That is the most important thing in life. Everything else stems from that. I learned from an early age, thanks to the wonderful and helpful example of my Mom, how to pray and (perhaps more importantly) developed the faith to know that God is listening to my prayers and that He answers them. What a marvelous blessing that is, to learn from my Mom how my heavenly Father is listening to my prayers and answering them. I learned the importance of scripture study; and I mean study, not just reading to get through a number of verses or chapters everyday, but really studying out what the prophets and the Lord are telling us and how to apply that in my life. I have seen my mother readying and studying the scriptures too many times to count in my life. I know she loves the scriptures!! And I therefore want to love them that much every day. I learned so much from, and am ever grateful for, the gospel Q&A sessions we would have as teenagers about once a month with my parents. My Mom's knowledge of the gospel is incredible and motivating to me. I could, but won't, go on about how funny my Mom is (she has a great sense of humor and there have been many nights where we would have family time that would leave us kids rolling on the ground with laughter), how dedicated to her kids she is (I learned a long time ago that my Mom will sacrifice anything for the well being of me and all her other kids, and that is an incredible amount of love!!!), and how dedicated and serving to others she is. All around I guess I am grateful that the Lord placed me in such a great family with such a wonderful, amazing, incredible mother. I love her so very much!

Here's a picture of my family from a couple of years ago when I was still in college. This was taken before my younger sister was married (the one with glasses) and back when my brother was still shorter than me:)