Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day from our house to yours!

What a blessing to have our family together today to celebrate Mother's Day together. We are very thankful and blessed to still have our grandson Noah and his fiancee' Dawn with us, as well as our son Scott and son Benton and his wonderful wife Rose.  After a sumptuous dinner of grilled boneless chicken thighs (thanks to our grilling expert Scott), pasta salad, tossed salad, cole slaw, beans, jello,  and rolls, we ventured out into the yard and the Memorial Garden to take this family photo. Again, thanks to our son Scott, who knows how to do the timer on my cell phone camera to set it so that he can run and jump into the picture before it snaps the photo.  That's why it looks like he just ran in behind us  just in the nick of time...that's what he did. I am glad these young people know how to figure these things out!

This morning we had a wonderful experience at church.  I may have mentioned before that Dawn was creating some sweet little "Prayer Pillows" to sell with her business of creating jewelry, etc.  Well, one of the sweet ladies of our church found out about it and after consulting with the "powers that be" in the church office, they commissioned Dawn to make 50 of these little pillows to give to each woman today for a Mother's Day gift from the church.  So over the past couple of weeks she has been very busy  sewing these little prayer pillows, spending many hours in her room cutting and sewing.  

I even got in on the activity by sewing the little metal tags on each pillow. Each one was just a simple word, but with so much extra meaning...

Words like: Love, Faith, Trust, Believe, Hope, Beautiful, Family, Protected, Fearless, Brave, Miracle, Dream.  

Each little pillow had a different message/scripture verse on each side, verses that we prayed would give hope, and faith, and trust, and love, and help the women feel protected and fearless and brave as they put their trust in the One true Lord.

A couple of extra special women received a larger pillow...Our Pastor's Wife (we forgot to take her picture)

And our friend Norma, who headed up this whole idea and helped make it happen...Here' Norma and Dawn this morning when Dawn presented her with the pillow that had her very favorite verse on it:

After putting each little pillow in a gift bag, the Pastor joined us in a circle of prayer to say a special blessing over the pillows, that they would be a true blessing to each woman who received them. Then they were distributed to each woman in the church service this morning, not just the mothers, but every woman, because we are all special women in Christ and deserve to be honored.

Here's Dawn also taking the bags of pillows out to distribute them to the ladies...

There were 50 pillows made, and we prayed there would be enough to go around to every woman because we did have some extra guests this morning for Mother's Day. I told Dawn that we would pray that it would be like the feeding of the 5,000, when Jesus blessed the five loaves and 2 fishes and there was enough food to feed everyone, with 12 baskets of fragments left over. (John 6:1-14).  Indeed we had 5 pillows left after everyone had received one, and we counted five women who were not present today who were out sick or had other issues, who will be given those pillows as soon as someone can take them to them.  God is so good!!

I cannot begin to tell you how proud I was of what Dawn was able to do for the women of our church. Even though the church did reimburse her for the pillows, it was still a labor of love and something that no amount of money could truly ever repay. I believe it also had a lot of special meaning for her as she worked with the scripture verses and read them over and over again. 

After that, our Pastor had a wonderful message about the Virtuous Woman found in Proverbs 31:10-31. You may enjoy listening to this message and be encouraged!!

I also received some sweet gifts...this wooden planter was made by our son Benton and Rose. Rose is still going to finish it by painting the tulip and holder and plant the sweet little succulents in the pot when it is done.  They made these for the ladies that work at Home Depot with Rose who had to work today on Mother's Day. 

I also received some lovely cards and much needed bars of Lavender Goat Milk Soap. We used to sell this at Dixie Cottage, but the vendor is no longer selling the soap there since we sold the business, however Rose was still able to get some soap from her to give me because she knows how much I love it. That made me VERY happy!

So all in all it has been a lovely and very special day.  

This is my special little Prayer Pillow. The tag says "Blessed", and yes, I truly am.

Amen!