My mother's hands..........

To me they were beautiful, to her they were gnarled and wrinkled.........but the fact that they were gnarled and wrinkled just spoke to me how hard she had worked all her life. And lots of times did not have the money to go out and buy clothes for her children (her and dad raised 12) so she would sew on a Singer treadle sewing machine often into the night creating beautiful clothes for us from hand-me-downs. I remember my Gr. 12 graduation dress. It was pink with white polka dots and it was my older sister's bridesmaid dress that she had worn for a wedding years before and my mom made it over for me. Do you know what? I felt like a princess. With her hands, she would create beautiful crazy quilts she called them.... from scrape material. With her hands, she scrubbed on a wash board heavy woollen underwear and pants and dresses and hung them out to dry and in the winter they would freeze on the lines and she would have to bring them in to dry. With her hands, she tended and nurtured a beautiful flower garden as well as a large vegetable garden and in the fall, we would can veggies and more veggies as well as berries of all kinds. Chokecherries, gooseberries, cranberries, raspberries, pincherries, you name it, we had it! Her hands made the best bread in the world, cookies would be just out of the oven when we would come home from school. I remember one time when I had the measles and was so sick ... how much comfort and love I felt from my mother's hands as she would wash my face with a cool cloth to take down my fever. O there were times too when I was naughty that I felt a hand on my backside, not very often but I knew that I had it coming and realized it was not worth it to disobey my mother. How thankful I am today that she not only taught me through example but wanted me to be the very best I could be so she was not afraid to discipline me. My mother's hands folded in prayer many times for her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. How thankful I am for that.
I held her hands in mine and they were very thin and worn,
But they held mine just as tightly as the day that I was born,
These tender and expressive hands etched by work and care,
Have folded o'er my bedside many times in humble prayer,
They've washed for me, they've fed me, they've helped me be a woman,
There's a little of our Lord Himself in every mother's hands.