And The Winner Is...

I realize that I failed to put an end date on my 'honoring my mom' giveaway. Since I generally leave a giveaway open for a week, I sat down last night and read back through all the comments to count them up and choose a winner.

There are a lot of wise mothers out there. Would you like to hear what our mothers have taught us?

My Mother Taught Me ----

* The importance of prayer

* To treat others how you want to be treated

* Honesty

* Forgiveness is a choice, not based on feelings

* The importance and meaning of the word "No"

* To always talk kindly about others

* How to be hospitable

* To love people even when they are unlovable

* To reach out to the neighbors

* How to sew

* Respect for school teachers

* To fold laundry neatly

* It is better to give than to receive

* Be a friend to everyone even if they don't look "cool"

* To write thank you notes

* How to clean house

* To give credit to others

* To enjoy books and poetry

* "If you don't have anything good to say about someone, be quiet."

* I can depend on God in every situation

* To care for others even if things aren't perfect

* How to spoil my husband

* "Get at it and do it"

* To apologize when I've done wrong as a parent

* Life skills - and if she didn't know how, she had someone else teach me

* To reach out to those who are hurting

* To accept life as it comes without complaint

Thank you so much for sharing with me, I loved reading through all your comments!

My mom taught me many things, as well. As a mom myself now, I often think of mom's actions that spoke louder than words. Many were the times she let us play with something that might end up broken or lost or ruined. I didn't think much of it then, when I was begging to play with baby clothes from her cedar chest, but I think of it now. While she could have taught us to be harder workers instead of washing those dishes so we could play a game, she was showing us by her actions that we were more important than the things she owned or all the work that got accomplished. She loved nothing more than seeing us having fun and using our imaginations.

Last night, as I read through your comments and counted up what number to feed into random.org, I mentioned to Chris that I needed to choose a winner.

"How many names do you have?" He wondered.

I told him the number I had come up with.

"Why don't you give them all a book?"

I'm sure my eyes got as big as saucers because he laughed and said, "Why not? It would be fun!"

And so, all you lovely people who blessed my day by leaving a comment, please email your address to christopherbethany@juno.com. It will take a little time to get all the details situated but thanks to my generous husband (and Dorcas Smucker herself, who was also very generous) eventually each and every one of you will be receiving a copy of "Fragrant Whiffs Of Joy"!

You heard that correctly.

Now isn't that a nice Christmas surprise?