Thank you, Momma for making me CREATIVE...Saturday, January 4, 2014

With the promotion that I’m involved with on ETSY, I have spent the last two days THANKFUL that I was taught by my mother to be CREATIVE…I am not only creative with my hands, but I also have a creative mind! 

Mother was an ENCOURAGER…I have done my best the past 20 months to LOVE and to encourage more.  At the visitation for Mother’s death, a family friend said that now MISS MARTHA was gone, I would have to take over for her…I just laughed and said there was NO WAY I could ever fill her shoes, for that woman LOVED like I have never seen before in my entire LIFE!  I resented the LOVE that she showed to so many because I THOUGHT that LOVE should be reserved for only me and NOT every Tom, Dick and Harry that she met on the street…WHAT I did NOT understand was that LOVE multiplies in your heart when you give it away…WHAT a brat I was and still am… She got it!

17th Birthday in 1979-dressed as little girls

This is the rough draft of the letter

My senior year in college, my roommate, suitemate and I got an apartment RIGHT by the railroad tracks.  I moved in earlier so that I could establish residency in the town so that my scholarships would not be taken away because of my moving OFF campus, which was not allowed back in the day.  My first night I was RUDELY awakened by the rattling and shaking of the apartment walls as the train went by.  At that moment, I began to question EVERY decision I had spent the last six months in planning!  Because of this incident, Tiny T. Mouse was BORN in my head.  Tiney the Mouse (don’t call em T.T. Mouse, please) wrote a letter to my mother that she thought was HILARIOUS.  She even drew a sketch of him and sent him to me!  I was forever doing silly things like writing letters using MANY words that would begin with ONE letter for as many of the words as was possible…Though the letters I sent her were few and far between, at LEAST I tried to make them memorable!!  

May 1980, Me & Momma at Lu's House

I guess, in reality, the reason I write my posts is a TRIBUTE to her.  She and I struggled in our relationship my whole life.  I LOVED my Mother, but I grew so weary of EVERYTHING being criticized and being used as a LESSON…YES, I am thankful beyond words that she cared so much, but I just wish that SOMETIMES she would let SOME of the moments pass…With THAT being said, MAYBE had she NOT tried so hard, I would be EVEN worse than I am today!  I was a tough child for her to raise because I have NO filters on my mouth at all…I do NOT intentionally TRY to hurt people…BELIEVE me, If I WANT to hurt someone, then sadly, it is NOT a problem for me to express my feelings in a VERY ARTICULATE fashion.  I was constantly hurting her feelings and I didn’t mean to at all.  It was a struggle to keep a good relationship with her, while it was a BREEZE to be with my Daddy…I could say ANYTHING and he would come right back at me with his thoughts on what I had just said and we would be fine…no drama at all!!  I hate DRAMA…Mother could NOT talk to me…she wrote me letters…constantly she was writing me a letter…ugh…I HATED those letters!!!

I don’t want to leave you with the thought that Mother and I were CONSTANTLY fighting because we did not have much fighting in my house at all…WELL, there was the middle child who had to be BANNED from watching “rasslin’” because of using ME as the wrestling partner…I seemed to always have either an “Indian Burn” or an ankle or shoulder sprain…BUT not REAL fighting.  Mother and I had many moments of utter and complete bliss resulting in belling laughing!  One of my fondest memories and one of the last things she said to me was HOW she LOVED to hear me laugh.  She made our home a happy home and did everything in HER power to make sure we could take advantage of every POSITIVE opportunity that came our way.  She made sure that I got to travel to places and to see things and to experience life BEYOND our small dairy farm.  She tried her BEST to teach me to be a LADY…ugh…I was so content being a tomboy…

 

May 23, 1980, Me, Momma & LuAnn- Graduation Night Reception at my house

Mother taught me to use my mind….to use my heart…to use my hands…to think…to learn…to be ME…to be creative…to TRY…to give…to glorify GOD…to laugh…to love…to be silly…to care for those who didn’t have as much as we had…

 This is the Dutch Doll quilt that Momma made for me for my 17th Birthday.  The doll's clothes were made from pieces of our dresses (that she had made) and with pieces of clothing from several of my friends--she monogrammed their names onto the quilt pieces.  That is Mother on the right.  The other ladies were member of the Barren Plains Home Demonstration Club--the small town where Mother had been raised.  Several of the ladies who quilted my quilt had been special to Mother as a little girl...Mother made sure that EVERYTHING had a meaning...

Another fond memory is of her inviting a classmate to our home one day.  It was somewhere around the third or fourth grade and the girls names was Tina.  They were sharecroppers and had NOTHING in the way of earthly possessions.  Mother and I shopped for the perfect gift for Tina and then we pampered her and did her hair and nails and just LAUGHED!  I have no clue what happened to her, but I HOPE that for ONE DAY she KNEW that MY Momma KNEW how to love and to make someone feel special…JUST like she did EVERY DAY of her life for me and my brothers…

  This was July 1982 in Medlline, South America.  It was a tour that Momma directed to visit our Mission fields.  She is the lady in the middle of the picture with the White jacket (that she made) and I am beside her in the red dress (that she made)...I got off the plane and our friends ASKED where I was...I blended in WELL with the South Americans...LOL...



I am THANKFUL for the GOOD that FAR outweighed the bad.  I am THANKFUL that she cared enough to NEVER stop trying to make me a BETTER Person.  I am THANKFUL for the creativity that she taught me.  I am MOST THANKFUL that she taught me that God gives EACH of us GIFTS and that we MUST be willing to use them for HIS GLORY…I hope that I make GOD Smile and I HOPE that Mother is proud of me…BUT I don’t know if I will ever stop WISHING that I could have been a better daughter for HER than what I was…BUT I will do my BEST to be the DAUGHTER she is STILL proud to call “her baby”…I LOVE ya, Momma and thank you for LOVING me…Blessings to YOU…~charlotte ♥