Here’s a few reasons why… I’ll start with my mother.
Mom’s always been, her whole life, an academic. Often she’ll tell me that her sisters wouldn’t allow her to cook, believing her better suited for school than for the kitchen… “They never ate what I cooked. Whatever I cooked could hardly match up to their food because to them, my hands weren’t good in for a kitchen anyway. They knew I was better at reading than filling the table, and wouldn’t fail to remind me.” Aside from being as smart as a whip, she’s also enthusiastically creative, infectiously joyful, and thinks so purely and deeply about every aspect of her life. She’s built by hand a business practically from scratch, combining her thorough knowledge of economics and psychology to create a kindergarten in which the kids are filled past overflowing with love, nourishment, and a kindergarten education most caring parents would die for. She’s strong, but also so tender, as only a mother can be. Sometimes when Dad’s out of town, she and I talk about her faith journey, how she’s struggled, and enjoyed, learning what it means to balance her power as a self-made woman with the strength and humility, of being a wife and mother of 3… (well, with me, 4!). All you have to do is hold one little conversation, and it’s obvious you’re talking to a special and wonderful woman. The stories she has to tell are brilliant and colorful, not because necessarily they are exciting, but because they’ve opened a completely new world and culture up to me in a way that no amount of reading or self-experience could. When my mother opens her mouth to speak, the words that come are entirely from the heart, and the windows they create are like panoramic views of the work God has done and is doing in her life. I’ve never thought I could watch and adult grow. From my perspective as a growing girl myself, I’d always known that “growing up” happens our entire lives, but I’d never seen a real tangible example of that, or been able to fully and completely understand what that meant in a real sense. Watching my mother grow has been one of the most inspiring and humbling things I could ever witness, much less imagine. When I came to live in her house, things were… well, they were very different from the home I’d been used to; my Chinese mother is very invested in her work at the school. “Before you came,” she once told me, “we would often forget to come home and eat dinner until very late!” she would laugh and continue, “The kids would stay in the classrooms at the kindergarten until 9:00, 10:00 in the evening before we remembered dinnertime.” Her work is important to her. Very, very important. And it was obvious in the way the home was run. And from the conversations I’ve had, and the small moments in which I’ve seen parts of her heart, I’m not always sure she’s very proud of just how important it had become in some past years. But as God has grown in His general BIGness for her, and as the kindergarten has seemed to overflow with blessings from Him. Things have really changed, and His love shines more brightly through her with each passing day (yet considering just how brightly it shone through her to being with… well, let’s just say the effect on her relationships is blinding in the most beautiful sense). It seems she’s even come to treasure her identity as a mother and wife in tangible ways. I came home one day to see flowers on the table. The couch now has pillows. My brothers’ legos now have their very own box. The guest (and vegetable storage) room has been dusted out and cleaned. The washing-machine fills the house with its homey humming on a regular basis. And every so often, I’ll hear music drifting down from her office. But perhaps the most heartwarming change is the way she’s plucked up her courage, thrown off years of unease and discouragement, and cooked. To some, that may sound like a menial endeavor. But when you’ve lived your life off the beaten path as a brave and daring business-woman… while the rest of the world looks down on you for your lack of prowess as a housewife, well, providing a meal for your own family can be one of the noblest adventures of them all… and she, bravest quest-er in the realm. Bread, fried fish, vegetables, pear-and-honey soup, porridge… all of it started at first slowly, with unsure and hesitant spurts of culinary creativity… then more and more quickly, until… all of a sudden, every week, we have a full dinner table of meals she’s taken humble pride in.
From the deepest parts of the heart and soul, to little touches like pillows, light and love has grown. I think I love my mother most simply because of that. Because the love she shows is vulnerable, yet uncompromisingly strong and profoundly wise; it is, and always be a testament to the glory of God being man fully alive. My mother is fully alive, and growing each and every day. And God has blessed and multiplied his blessing hundredfold by merely allowing me to be a witness and, I say with pride, a daughter to this amazing woman.
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