Photo: April 2006. Me and Mom gaze upon my youngest niece, Abby

I have a great mom, and I don’t say that just because she’s my mother; I think it’s a pretty much universal truth. So I’d like to introduce you to my mom, Jo (or Joey).

The first thing you might notice about my mom is that she is humble, probably to a fault. She is soft-spoken, unassuming, completely unpretentious, down-to-earth, easy going and friendly. She’s the type of person you might walk past every day and never notice, unless you catch a glimpse of one of her trademark t-shirts, which unfailingly offer a spiritual message about God’s love or provide an uplifting quote from the Bible.

She is generous. When a family is down and out, she’s the one who delivers a thanksgiving meal and a box of groceries on the doorstep. When the upstart community church needs a new speaker system, she’s the one who anonymously purchases and donates the exact equipment needed, though it might mean exhausting her entire savings.

She is faithful. She held the unglamorous job of leading “children’s church” for a dozen years, always took us to sing Christmas carols at nursing homes, pitched in to help her neighbor who worked a dairy farm just because she wanted to be a friend.

She is joyful. For years she has visited and regularly sent cards to elderly ladies at hospice centers, simply to make them feel appreciated and not so alone.

She is kind. As a foster parent, she has opened her home to more than a dozen children suffering from emotional, behavioral and medical problems over the past two decades. Last year she had three siblings, ages 4-16, and she’s currently taking care of a 7-year-old boy who has suffered from a respiratory ailment since birth.

She is gentle. Even while she was struggling through a divorce, my mother acted as a nurse and took care of an elderly lady who was dying of emphysema. To thank my mother for her amazing charity, the woman’s widower invited us to move in with him, which was great since we had no place else to live at the time.

She is loving. My mother is not concerned with appearances or privilege but only with doing good, which is how she wound up marrying her second husband, a man who had been in a traumatic accident years earlier and as a result was handicapped, quadriplegic, and nearly unable to speak.

She is giving. When my grandmother reached the point where dialysis was no longer cutting it, guess who lined up to donate one of her kidneys? I don’t think it was just a coincidence that of my grandmother’s six children, my mother’s biochemistry was the closest match.

She is patient. Through constant heartache and disappointment, my mom has pressed on, pouring her heart out at thankless jobs just to get the bills paid. After years spent working at a sports clothing warehouse, she was unceremoniously terminated by her malicious boss. Since then, she has taken a series of temp jobs, including one most recently on an electrical assembly line that required her to use heavy, oversized tools that caused her carpal tunnel syndrome to flare up and left her wrists throbbing with pain. Due to the complexity and difficulty of the work, most of her temp coworkers left the first day after lunch. But she persisted at this job for two weeks, mostly because she was required to pay a deposit of some kind that she would be forced to forfeit otherwise. See a photo of her handiwork at right.

She is steadfast. My mother always made sure that we were fed and clothed and had a roof over our heads. She educated us, helped us learn to read while we were still toddlers, and she insured that we would do well in school. She taught us right and wrong, and she showed us (not just told us about) God’s love on a daily basis.

We, her sons, have always felt loved and cherished. We were never treated like we were a burden. She has delighted in our triumphs and comforted us in the bad times.

She has set the bar so high that I can’t even see it, and I couldn’t be more proud and more thankful that she is my mom.