{"id":24337,"date":"2020-02-12T08:01:10","date_gmt":"2020-02-12T13:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/debmillswriter.com\/?p=24337"},"modified":"2020-02-12T08:15:05","modified_gmt":"2020-02-12T13:15:05","slug":"worship-wednesday-love-notes-how-mom-encouraged-her-faraway-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/debmillswriter.com\/?p=24337","title":{"rendered":"Worship Wednesday – Love Notes – How Mom Encouraged Her Faraway Family"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"IMAG2718<\/a><\/p>\n

Therefore encourage one another and build up one another, just as you also are doing. \u2013 1 Thessalonians 5:11<\/a><\/p>\n

Encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called \u201cToday,\u201d so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. \u2013 Hebrews 3:13<\/a><\/p>\n

[Today is Mom’s birthday – 18 of them now passed since she died. This blog adapted from the Archives<\/a>. Using #WorshipWednesday today to showcase how we can share the love of Jesus with those He places in our lives.]<\/p>\n

Our little family never lived close to the grandparents. This was not easy\u2026for any of us. Before I married, I did live close to home, and my mom was my best friend. She died several years ago, and I often say to people who knew her that \u201cwhen I grow up, I want to be just like her.\u201d Still working on that.<\/p>\n

Mom and I shared a weakness for words\u2026they are probably excessively important to us,\u00a0delivering both positive and (sometimes) negative weight.\u00a0She was an amazing encourager. She rarely missed an opportunity to lift another\u2019s spirit or to speak loving truth to someone desperate for God\u2019s touch.<\/p>\n

When I moved away to take a teaching job, she and my dad helped me with the move. New Haven, Connecticut would be a 2-day drive from Georgia. It was the farthest I had ever wandered from home. She stayed a week\u00a0to help me settle in. \u00a0While there, she was such great company. We explored the city together and laughed over a new culture and cried at the missing that was ahead for us.<\/p>\n

She filled my freezer with her baking, and, while I was at work, she wrote notes. Then she hid them everywhere. After she flew home, I began finding them. In my coffee mug. Under my pillow. In the pocket of my coat. Among my reference books. Behind my music books on the piano. She was with me in the love notes she left, and it made the distance between us\u2026less.\"IMAG2720<\/a><\/p>\n

My mom and I also had a weakness for bits of paper. I kept every one of her notes. These from that move over 30 years ago are fading\u2026red ink on pink paper. There is a lifetime of notes between my mom and me. The tradition she started on that first move has become a life-long tradition for our family. Our visits back and forth, across the US and then the globe, have been papered by these little notes.<\/p>\n

Our children, from the time they could write, entered into this tradition much to the joy of their grandparents. Before we would leave again from visits with them, these three young ones would write of their affection for their grandparents and hide them all over their houses. I\u00a0delighted in\u00a0their cooperation in this conspiracy of love.<\/p>\n

Mom always wrote notes\u2026not just to us but to so many. She and her Sunday School Class ladies would send cards every week to the sick ones or the sad ones. She had a special burden for the elderly, for widows (including functional widows, deserted by husbands) and for fatherless children (again including those \u201corphaned\u201d by still-living fathers). She\u00a0inspired me\u00a0by her humble ambition\u00a0.<\/p>\n

Pure and undefiled religion before our God and Father is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained by the world. \u2013 James 1:27<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I am so thankful for my mom\u2019s bits of paper\u2026for her love\u2026and for her perseverance in encouraging and serving others. Her generation is sadly almost gone, and it is for us to pick up these traditions and pass them on somehow to the next generations\u2026Maybe there won\u2019t be bits of paper or love notes like in the past. I\u00a0do hope we still take the time to write. Definitely, the call to serve and to encourage is as current as ever. My life continues to be rich with those, young and old, who reach out to those around them with words of affirmation and kindness. Written or not, they are love notes to the heart.<\/p>\n

Thanks, Mom. Thank God for you.<\/p>\n

\"Mom<\/a><\/p>\n

The 59 \u201cOne Anothers\u201d of the New Testament<\/a><\/p>\n

Memory-of-Mildred Byrd McAdams<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Therefore encourage one another and build up one another, just as you also are doing. \u2013 1 Thessalonians 5:11 Encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called \u201cToday,\u201d so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. \u2013 Hebrews 3:13 [Today is Mom’s birthday – 18 … Continue reading Worship Wednesday – Love Notes – How Mom Encouraged Her Faraway Family<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2763,810,690,1628,1704,1705,794,147,3208,903,2556,1435,599,33,2819,5130,317,795,2611,888,1301,1437,887,1456,610,991],"tags":[4265,7,2408,7957,137,992,2,2960,442,653,7956],"class_list":["post-24337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aging","category-all-good-gifts","category-babies-children","category-character","category-communication","category-conversations","category-faithfulness","category-family-2","category-finishing-strong","category-grace","category-grief-and-loss","category-growing-up","category-heaven","category-inspired","category-kindness","category-legacy","category-lessons-learned","category-love-2","category-love-your-neighbor","category-memories","category-mom","category-mothers","category-remembering","category-steadfast-love","category-thanksgiving-or-gratefulness","category-writing","tag-encouragement","tag-family","tag-family-traditions","tag-faraway-family","tag-grandparents","tag-love-notes","tag-mom","tag-mothers","tag-orphans","tag-widows","tag-words-of-encouragement"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pauPAB-6kx","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/debmillswriter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/debmillswriter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/debmillswriter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debmillswriter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debmillswriter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24337"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/debmillswriter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24344,"href":"https:\/\/debmillswriter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24337\/revisions\/24344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/debmillswriter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debmillswriter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/debmillswriter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}