It is exactly 20 days until our Mary will be taking flight to her new adventure at The Crown Bible College in Tennessee.
My heart is full.
So many things run through my mind as I recall the past 11 years with this beautiful young lady that the LORD has entrusted to us.
As of right now, she is sleeping. It's 10:30 and I have tried for 11 years to get the child to learn to get up on her own. She has to be at work at 12:00. If only I could come up with a magic potion to give her! We have a method of getting her to come up from her room called "stomping" 3 times. (Kinda like Tony Orlando's "Knock three times" on the ceiling if you want me sorta). At first it worked well... and now it goes into rattling the walls and catching the falling pottery. Things that "work" with some do not work with our Mary. Name it.. I've tried it... yelling, (naturally), begging, positive reinforcement, cold water in the face, grandma's rule... nothing worked.
So, today, we use the 'stomping' method and remarkably she came up on the first round. I greeted her and asked her (for the millionth time it seemed) what happened to the alarm clock... and "don't you have to work at noon?" and "I'm disappointed in you" and " you have 20 days left to learn to get up.. then, it's up to Crown College to instill this into your life." I did remind her that I love her (also for the millionth time) and that we didn't have long to get this "getting up on time" thing down.
Mary is so bright! She can fix almost anything that's "fixable". She does very well at academics, when she puts her mind to it.
There are so many wonderful qualities about Mary!! She really should be in the medical field.. she has a natural "way" about her. She has compassion and a gentleness about her. On the other hand, I have often compared her to a wild untameable mustang... She definitely has a STRONG will. I just pray she uses it for the LORD!
I remember seeing her at the DFACS office with "Bouncy Baby".. (she still has her tucked away in her hope chest with her Mickey Mouse etch a sketch). Much has changed since that day... some has not..but we are all still a work in progress, are we not? Mary and I have a bond that most biological mothers and daughters will never have. It is a bond that seems even closer somehow...When God knit our hearts together I do believe he cast in a few extra "pearls". We have had some seriously challenging times...but, in Character with the Faithful Father that He is, He has delivered us out of them all.
Today I can say honestly, and I think she would agree, (I hope so anyway), that we have no animosity or strife between us. We have both grown so much in so many areas that we would not have done without each other in our lives. God has used her to refine me in so many ways. She has "grown" me in ways that nobody else could have ever done.
Mary has grown to be what most mothers only hope for in a daughter. She is making tough choices while the "world at large" pulls her in so many directions. I am so very proud of her. I hope she knows just how much she means to me... her mother.
