I understand Mother's Day differently now.
Not only as a day for flowers, messages, and public honour, but as a day that asks you to look again at what motherhood carried before you were old enough to recognise it.
There are some lives that keep speaking after the person is gone.
Not loudly.
Not every day in obvious ways.
But in the quiet places.
In the way you carry responsibility.
In the way you love your own family.
In the way certain memories return when life asks more from you than you thought you had.
A mother's life can do that.
When you are young, you mostly receive motherhood. You receive the food, the care, the correction, the protection, the prayers, the presence. You know what it feels like to be loved, but you do not always understand what that love was costing.
You do not see all the fears she had to carry quietly.
You do not see how often she had to be strong when she may have wanted to be held herself.
You do not understand that some of what looked normal was actually sacrifice repeated so often that it became part of the furniture of your life.
Then you grow older.
You begin to carry people. You make decisions that affect a household. You worry about things you cannot fully control. You pray differently. You love with more weight in your hands.
And slowly, you start to see your mother with older eyes.
Not just as the one who raised you, but as a person who carried. A person who endured. A person who gave from places that were not always full. A person who had to keep choosing love even when life did not make it easy.
That is why a mother's love can teach you something about God before you even have the language for it.
Not because it is perfect.
But because real love carries.
It covers.
It corrects.
It stays.
It gives.
It protects.
It prays in hidden places.
It keeps showing up long before anyone understands the cost.
Today I honour my mother with a gratitude that has grown deeper with time.
For the sacrifices I saw.
For the sacrifices I did not see.
For the prayers I knew about.
For the prayers I may never know about.
For the strength that shaped me.
For the love that still has fingerprints on who I am becoming.
Mother's Day carries both gratitude and ache.
Gratitude for the gift.
Ache because the gift is no longer held the same way.
But love does not disappear simply because presence changes.
Some love remains in the bones of a family.
Some love keeps forming you long after the voice is gone.
Some love becomes part of how you stand, how you endure, how you believe, and how you love others.
So today, I thank God for her life.
For the mother she was.
For what she carried.
For what she gave.
For what she planted.
For what still remains.
Her presence is missed.
But her love is not gone.
It still speaks.