Gang Moms

The familiar smell of fumes and the stop-and-go of traffic reminds me that we are not out of Chicago just yet.

Hi friends.

With a frozen meatloaf for Sunday’s dinner in tow we head to Wisconsin for our crew’s third college graduation.

With as many trips back and forth you’d think we’d be able to drive this stretch in our sleep.

Some would say that once or twice we may HAVE done so.

And for some reason unbeknownst to myself, this college always has their graduation ceremony on Mother’s Day.

MOTHER’S DAY.

The day for Mothers.

Which for us has been the day to travel with…..um, a frozen meatloaf.

Look, nothing paints a better picture of what true motherhood is than carrying a frozen meatloaf from Ohio to Wisconsin.

There’s traffic, there’s outrageous gas prices and there’s even ONE STALL women’s restrooms when you waited a bit too long to finally make that pit stop in LaPorte, Indiana.

The journey of the frozen meatloaf symbolizes a Mother’s love to bring her children comfort food because she loves them, because she knows the oatmeal in the cafeteria’s meatloaf (which I have explained IN DETAIL is perfectly normal AND acceptable) creeps them out, AND because she knows that though her crew means well, dinner will be a disaster if Mom doesn’t have SOME hand in it.

So we press on with our exorbitantly large meat package in tow.

Is there a little baggie with brown sugar for the topping alongside?

Why yes, yes there is.

Because if we cannot be a little “Extra” on Mother’s Day than just call the whole “Shibang” off.

I jest because of all of the holidays out there this one is my least favorite.

Take birthdays for example.

Since we met last I have turned another year older and officially become a grandma.

Huzzah for me.

I can fully enjoy both of these things because I had absolutely nothing to do with them.

I was born, and I prayed a little fella into the world.

Neither of these things require me to do one single solitary thing.

Mothering is another story all together.

It’s a LONNNNNNNG story, like “War and Peace.”

Like all moms we feel the weight of the understanding that we are not Moms because we had children.

We are Moms because we love them day in and day out.

We are Moms because we plead for their souls in prayer and lead them to an understanding of salvation when they’re home from church with the chicken pox.

We are Moms because we hurt when they are disciplined, when they choose to make a terrible decision, when they speak in anger and when they refuse to look far enough down the road.

Mother’s Day isn’t just a day.

It’s the weight of years wrapped up in the feeling that Mom’s deep down feel that they might not ever be able to do enough for those they carried under their heart.

Don’t get me wrong, we LOVE celebrating OTHER Mothers.

My own Mother had me as the last of a sting of girls, listened to way too many tap dance lessons and saw me break my wrist twice in a few years.

She let my Dad pick my name and assuredly wanted the neighbors to pick me up and take me home with them most days.

I’m grateful that she loved me, cared for me, showed me how to make an amazing meatloaf and accepted my gift from art class of a decorative ash tray with her name spelled with a “y” instead of an “i.”

I love Moms everywhere.

We just aren’t that crazy about ourselves.

I was musing on this the other day when I was patting out the old familiar pie crust that was given to me years ago after I decided there had to be a better way to make a pie than rolling out dough.

This desire came after a ladies meeting I spoke at with my oldest girl just a little thing beside me.

Someone asked said daughter as part of a game to name something her Mother did.

Her response was, “She makes us all go outside when she rolls out a pie crust.”

Thus began the necessity to bring the kids back into the house and find an easier crust recipe.

I knew there just had to be one.

And there was, and is, and it is called “pat in the pan crust.”

It will change your life.

Like, it actually will.

Your kids will be able to stay in the house and everything.

So the apples were going in and the streusel topping was falling off the sides as it does, and it got me thinking about a series that my Littles used to listen to.

It was called “The Sugar Creek Gang.”

You may have heard of the likes of them.

There was Poetry, Dragonfly, Circus, Big Jim, and even Little Jim,

And then there was Bill.

Bill Collins.

Bill had a little sister Charlotte Ann, but more importantly had a Mom who always had something good for him to eat when he came home.

And most often he was interested in his Mom’s pies.

If you haven’t listened to the series you just need to.

If you looked the meaning of the word “Wholesome”up in the dictionary, there would be a QR code to an episode of “The Sugar Creek Gang.”

The writing, the voice of Bill,

Words don’t suffice here.

It’s magical.

I remember tuning-in as my crew giggled, all of our ears glued to what would happen next and all the while I was always wishing I could be like Bill Collins’ Mom.

Don’t we spend most of our Mothering wishing to be another version of someone’s Mother?

I dropped off pie to my son and daughter’s home with their cutsie little fella,

And I dropped off pie at my Mom’s.

I fed heaps of it to my husband who about licked the bowl clean,

And I dropped some off to a neighbor who always asks for it.

And somewhere in the serving and ice cream scooping, I realized that all these years later,

All these days and weeks and months of serving and helping and praying and being a VERY ORDINARY Mom,

I had become my very own version of Bill Collins’ Mom.

I’d all but forgotten about her when the Lord brought her to mind the fourth time I found myself serving apple pie.

The inner dialogue that goes on between our own hearts and the Spirit of God is hard to adequately describe and precious to enjoy.

This was a moment where the Spirit wanted to take my list of self-condemnation crumpled up in my back skirt pocket and replace it with the joy of being the exact “Mom” He had created me to be.

Each of us have our very own “Gang.”

So I guess that makes us “Gang Moms.”

We can even develop our own secret handshake if you want.

So as we pull into Menomonee Falls for the Menomomillionth time,

With the frozen meatloaf,

We know that there will be cheering for our third crewman.

We also know that there will be waterproof mascara and there will be one Mom swallowing down all the feels about not being good enough, smart enough and cute enough to be called Mom to these kiddos.

But in the midst of the mess and meatloaf, there will be a silent gang of Mommas all over the world remembering that it was God’s business to give us whom he did,

And it will be His business to carry them on to heaven.

Happy Mother’s Day Mommas.