- What My Mother Taught Me
By Barbara Jane Thompson Coleman
• What it means to be a wanted child, for I was adopted.
• Not to demand blind obedience from your children.
• To open our hearts and our homes not only to familiar faces, but to new faces as well. Daddy and Mother both loved people.
• The joy of trying to provide for your children things they think are important. I could be happily dressed in clothes she had sewn, but she would buy an expensive manufactured belt, because I thought I needed one.
• Things don’t have to be perfect to be enjoyed. In an old farm house with loosened wallpaper she would set our table with her best dishes and original place cards to make a special dinner. No one noticed the wallpaper.
• How to make apple dumplings; her’s were the best!
•. We must give people the benefit of the doubt; even Christians are not born full-grown and need understanding and time to grown.
• There are other versions of the Bible than the King James, and other commentaries besides Johnson’s; there are other ways of looking at things and new ways to learn.
• To be open to new experiences with enthusiasm; to meet changes in our lives as new opportunities.
• How to give loving care to family, friends and strangers.
• In bookkeeping and in life: you don’t go to bed until your errors are found and your books balanced.
• To value God’s Word. I use and treasure several of her well-used Bibles. They are filled with her notes, questions and important underlines and exclamation marks that mark the things she wanted to add to her life.... she is still teaching me.
God blessed me greatly when he selected her for my Mother.
Barbara (Thompson) Coleman
<bcoleman@cavemen.net>
May-1994