I’ll admit, I’ve had a number of special blessings in my life. But the most memorable and meaningful ones have come from the people that meant the most to me. Sometimes there are no words to express gratitude to people for the things they do for us. And those things they do, themselves, aren’t always what’s so amazing, but just the idea or emotion that it conveys to you. As people often say, “It’s the thought that counts.”
I think back to when I was very young. And much of my perception of what was done for me was colored by the person who did it for me. For instance, there were certain things that should only be done by certain people. Moms, for instance, should be the ones who washed your clothes and fed you. And if it was done by someone else, it just wasn’t quite the same. Someone else could even try to do things in the exact same way, in the same order, or with the same materials, but it just didn’t quite measure up. Moms must have a special concoction when washing clothes, because if someone else did them it just wasn’t the way mom did it. They didn’t feel the same, they didn’t smell the same—they may not have even looked the same. They have a special way of folding, too, as it turns out.
But those things they did weren’t maybe so different from anyone else. But what you perceived as being different coming from mom wasn’t so much the method, but the reason. You knew that mom cared. That’s why you wanted mom to do it. Mom feeds me, mom does my laundry, mom does the baking—all the rest of you can get out of here. Just kidding. But that can kind of be your attitude when you’re a kid. And even when you went off to college, if you received a care package from home filled with homemade cookies or other baked items, it meant something to you because it was a reflection of that caring. You could just as easily go down to the grocery store and buy stuff from the bakery, but that wasn’t the same either. And it wasn’t the point. It wasn’t those items themselves, but the message it conveyed. Mom showed she cared by what she did. That’s what made it unique.
Those things we used to take for granted, now become more meaningful as we become older. Those things are always meaningful because the person it comes from is meaningful. As it is said, “You couldn’t pay a stranger enough to do what a mom is willing to do for free.” I guess that’s what makes it stand out. The blessing isn’t always in the gift itself, but in the person it came from. And it causes you to be thankful. And it causes you to want to reciprocate that caring. Because it’s not about those things, it’s about that act of caring that built that relationship.