Mama

     When I started to write this, it was before noon, May 12, 2012, the day before Mother's Day.  My wonderful husband of nearly 43 years, my 3 sons, 2 daughters in-law, and 5 granddaughters will celebrate Mother's Day with me tomorrow for early breakfast.  I am so glad that I have had today to be alone to think on my wonderful Mother.  She was the best of the best and I rise up and call her blessed!!! 

     I've always said that Mama was a teaching Mama.  I mean if she knew something, she could teach it! Actually, she was a teacher...she taught the Bible in Church in Sunday School all her active life.  I learned the Word from her and from wherever we were, Sunday School, Church, Bible School, BTU, GA's, Choir, etc.  

      I learned of Jesus from her.  Not only that she had a Savior and LORD that she shared with me, and I received Him, but she lived the life of Jesus.  I mean she did not only talk the talk.  My Mama walked the walk! Sundays were spent in morning and evening service.  We visited the sick in hospitals, homes, or family members and friends, or the graves of grandparents, etc. in between the two services.  

      Wednesday night was prayer meeting.  Mama also had visitation or class meeting or other meetings, like finance committee, that she attended during the week.  Most of my life, Mama worked full or part-time, and much of my young life, Daddy traveled.  

       With school for us and work for her, and taking care of my grandmother in our home for 2 years and in the hospital a lot of time, and being Mama and Daddy a lot of the time...my Mama still had time for me!  I mean she had time for all of us girls, but she had Teddi time.

        I learned to love, live, cook, write well, speak well, pray, visit, sing...at my Mama's feet.  I just have to stop here as tears are flowing and say that I miss her sooooo much!!! I loved her soooo much....and that love is stronger now than ever!!! I didn't know that it would be, but it is!!!

        Walking through life with her and modeling myself much after her as I went, even though during my teen-age years, no one would have believed that I would...certainly not me.  I would say that we both were split personalities...and the best of her and the best of me you could not beat!!! We would have won hands down!! 

        However, the worst of us both clashed terribly!! Some real battles with words...with discipline of course following every time.  I just had to have the last word, and she would have no part of that! :)

         I could write a whole book about her, but anyone who knows me knows I really can be wordy!  So, let me just say here that the gift she has given me that I appreciate the most is the gift of LOVE.  My Mama taught me to love my husband.  She loved daddy's socks off, and he adored her.

         I wanted that sooo bad!  At first, it didn't look like it would ever happen, but it did! Mama picked Tim out of the guys I dated.  She said he was a diamond in the rough.  Was she ever right!!!  I'll be married 43 years to by high school sweetheart the end of this month, and I'm more in love today than ever!!! He is also my best friend!

         When Daddy died, I watched Mama lose her eye in November and the love of her life the following February.  She was living with me.  What I now know she missed most was her best friend forever!!! He was her tootsie and she was his.  It had been a long time since they had had that romantic love life when he died...due to much sickness between the 2 of them, but if you had seen her telling him he couldn't leave her when he died...crying Ted Moore don't you leave me...well it was a sight.

          I'm sooo glad that they are together now.  I know they are with Jesus, and I know that they are my greatest cheerleaders in the crowd of witnesses around me.  It is sooo neat to know that Heaven is for real!!!!

          Mama also taught me to love my children.  She loved we 4 girls, and we had such quality time together, that we had no choice but to love our children.  We were saturated in that love.  We sopped with love...so to speak. Ask anybody how the Moore girls greet you...the same as their Mama...hugs and kisses...just gushy!!!! :)

          Mama loved us in the good times and in the bad times...all the ups and down times...she was Faithful as our Jesus is Faithful...she never left us or forsook us...like Jesus.  

           Then, she taught us to love our grandchildren.  How?  Same way!!! She modeled it for us!! There's not one grandchild that doesn't love Baba!!! And, their children after them!!!

           Mama had one advantage.  She started young...and she lived a long time!!  She was Mama at 18 years, and Baba at 37 years.  She was a great-grandmother, when she was I think 64. That's how she lived to see all but the two last great-grand girls.  She also has a great-great grandson now.  

           I'm 62, and my oldest grandgirl is almost 9.  I'll be 71 when she graduates from high-school.  I know I look gushy and all when I show all these pictures...and I am.  I am enjoying my grandchildren and my children and my hubby very much these days.

           I know that life is precious...watched Mama my whole life until hers ended...holding her hand even when life was leaving her body.  I have been mightily blessed of God to be here, and I don't take it for granted.  I know that there's no promise of tomorrow, so I am filling my life here on earth with the things I can take with me.  

           I am taking with me, my husband, children, grandchildren, sisters, cousins, friends, and all that will come.  Jesus is coming again soon, and it's time to get it together and go with us!!! 

           Love you all this wonderful Mother's Day weekend!!  

           I pray you enjoy the pictures. I tried to put them in some sort of order but I had to undo until I got back to how they were originally.  They are all mixed up, but I want you to know what I was trying to show you in the pictures.

           Mama loved her husband, girls, grands and great grands.  She also loved her brother and his sons and their children and grands.  Mama loved her mother in-law and sisters in-law and nieces and nephews and on-going.  Mama loved her aunts and cousins, and Mama loved her friends.  

           As you look through this...notice I have pictures of her with some of all of the above, but I have me with the same, and some of my sisters.  Mama loved her Daddy and Mama!! Family was everything for her as it is for me.  It is God's first and most important institution from the beginning!! 

           Makes me want to shout!!! :)

           Baba may be as young as 3-4 in a picture or soon before she went home to be with the LORD.  Beth and I have shared that our grands only knew Baba when she was sick...either here...in the assisted living...or the nursing home.  Our grands never knew Paw Paw.  He died in Feb. the year Ivey was born.  So, we cherish the older pictures of her.  Love exuded from her...I mean it gushed from her...regardless of her age.  :) 

                                        

                                                 

                    

Mama taught me to dwell in the secret place of the Most High!!! and, someone captured a physical display of the safety of that place...and I love it!!!

Love you all!!!

Mom, Aunt Teddi, Mimi, Mama Teddi, and Teddi   :))!!! xoxoxoxoxoxoxox