Thank You, Mom!

As Mother’s Day approached, the Second Grade teacher asked her little students: “If you could change one thing about your Mom, what would it be?” Without missing a beat, a little girl belted out: “I would like for her to get rid of those invisible eyes on the back of her head.”

I know exactly what this girl meant!

I must have been about 10 years old. My neighborhood friends had asked me to come with them, to a small mom and pop store in our town that had an outside vending machine. For some reason, my friends knew that although it required 50 penny coins to get anything out of the machine, two penny coins worked just as well. As you can imagine, it didn’t take us long to nearly empty the whole vending machine.

I remember having a nagging sense that what we had done wasn’t quite right. But, no one seemed to have noticed us hanging around that vending machine. No one had come out of the store and checked on what we were doing.

We left the scene of the crime assuming everything was okay. But when I got home, my Mom and Dad called me into their little workshop beside our house. I got a whopping like no other I remember.

See, the news of our little crime spree had somehow traveled to my house before I had gotten there. I still don’t know how my folks found out. Maybe the fact that the store owners were distant relatives had something to do with it.

Needless to say, I never again felt the urge to do something like that again. The licking was painful. It also made clear to me that what I had done was wrong and restitution was required.

I am grateful for a Mom, (with eyes on the back of her head), who taught me right from wrong. As we are once again celebrating our Mom’s, it is good to tell her that we love her. But I know she would appreciate even more if we show her that we love her by doing what is right, loving, and kind.

To honor and obey our mother and father is also the only one of the Ten Commandments that comes with a promise. “Things will go well for us and we’ll have a long life on earth!”