This week my daughters had their end of the year AWANA award ceremony. AWANA is a church program on Wednesday nights for kids preschool through elementary ages at our church where they memorize verses and listen to speakers and play other games. Typically the AWANA director has a speaker for the awards night, but this year she decided that instead of one speaker to have a couple of speakers who had gone through the AWANA program when they were a kid and now had kids in AWANA. Having been an AWANA alum myself, I agreed when asked to offer a few words on the stage.
I talked about how being in AWANA as a kid, though I didn't realize it at the time, provided a firm foundation for who I am today. I learned verses and truths that I understood in part at the time so that I could understand much more in full now. I learned that a church building is a place for fun and friends and learning, not just a place to sit down and shut up and wait until I was allowed to leave. And I learned that a church is a place where I mattered to adults, and my faith mattered to them. Until I had to speak about it, I hadn't really considered those lessons. But I see those same foundations being built in my kids today because of the work of the AWANA volunteers every Wednesday night.
I went through the AWANA program, received my firm foundation, and was given the opportunity to speak about it and its impact now on my kids, because of my mother.
She took me there. It was not a program at our church, but she took me there anyway. She told me it was important and made it important in the home. I can still smell the crock pot full of chili when we got home Wednesday nights, cooking all day so that we could eat together and still have enough time to get there. She challenged me each week to work through the books and learn as many verses as possible. My mother decided 30 years ago that this was important enough for us to do, and she was right. It wasn't just another activity that would fill our time. Instead, it was a firm foundation.
A friend of mine who spoke before me at this year's AWANA ceremony thought it would be cool if he brought in some of his old AWANA awards to show while he spoke so the kids could see them. He was also a circa-1985 attendee (though in a different church than me), and I recognized his awards as the same I worked for and received as a kid. I remember the pride I had in having achieved some of the AWANA honors, often admiring all the work I'd done to get there.
I realize the truth now. It wasn't just my work. It wasn't just my activity. For me to accomplish anything, it required Mom. I know that now. I know that as sure as the Sunday and Monday and Tuesday nights in our home are spent learning verses together, sometimes through frustration and struggle, so too were far too many nights in my youth spent with Mom urging me to learn one more verse, or listening to me practice, or I'm certain tolerating my impatient frustration fits. She could have dropped me off at the door at 6:30 PM and picked me up at 8 and left it alone the rest of the week. But she couldn't. She was building a firm foundation. And she did.
I know now that to build that foundation, the Wednesday night routine at home is disrupted. Supper is sooner. Bags and Bibles and books and vests have to be rounded up and ready. Bedtime is later. The weekly routine is also disrupted. If it matters, if a kid is to learn and grow and put down brick by foundational brick that will be remembered, it has to matter to someone else as well. And that someone else for me was Mom.
This week my daughters got a note in the mail. It was from my mom. On the top of it was a handwritten verse from her, followed by a few words congratulating them on all their work and success this year. It seems she's still building that foundation, even if she lives two hours away. Building it through notes, the same notes she sent to me with a verse at the top when I was in college, two hours away. Building it through verses inside of plastic eggs on Easter morning, next to those precious M&M's and assorted pieces of chocolate. Building it through phone calls asking to hear the books of the Bible recited by them after hearing of their success. Building it because it was important 30 years ago, and it's important now.
My foundation has many bricks that have led to who I am and how I work and on what I build my family's foundation. I am thankful for all the AWANA bricks and a mother who quietly mortared them together.
Happy Mother's Day.
****To read more about how cool my Mom is, see these previous Mother's Day posts:
Sunday, May 8, 2016
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