Two years into my husband’s fight with cancer, I faced yet another moment that brought me to my knees. I received a call, while at work, from a nurse at a hospital in Arkansas delivering the news that my mother’s biopsy ended with a mastectomy and removal of 13 lymph nodes. She had metastatic breast cancer.

I couldn’t. I still can’t. Believe it. Comprehend it.

What? Why? How? She told me she was having a small biopsy and not to be there as she would have friends taking her to and from the hospital.

This was NOT a small biopsy!

My husband and I had plans to leave that afternoon for a vacation with our 3-year-old son. We needed a respite between the heart-breaking reports of Slick’s cancer. Our car was fully packed with camping gear and grubby clothes.

What do I need to do? Why is this happening? What did I do to keep receiving devastating news? Oh, wait…it’s about them. They need me. Stop crying, listen to your co-workers, go home, and do what is necessary.

My brain shifted once again to my perpetual-feeling care-giving mode. We unloaded the camping gear, repacked better clothes, and headed to Little Rock to be with my mother.

Yet, within 24 hours of being with my precious mother recovering in the hospital, we were headed back to Texas to get our camping equipment to head back to Arkansas for our camping trip.

You see, mothers are always mothers. She knew that for a few weeks she had someone to take care of her physically, and she wanted us to have a break from our sorrows. Mothers want what is best for their children at the sacrifice of their own trials. (Can I just add here that I think my mother was pretty close to perfect? I know she wasn’t a perfect person, but she was the perfect mother for me; and she was my friend.)

I can tell you that our days in a state park in Arkansas gave me very dear memories that I am able to share with my son about his father. That trip was our last vacation as a family. What a blessing for my mother to give us!

God wants to give to us even greater gifts than mothers, or fathers, wish to give.

Jesus, in Matthew 7:11 tells us, “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!”

To give means ‘to bestow without a return,’ according to my Webster’s dictionary.

God gives without expecting anything in return.

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:23

FREE!

Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. James 1:17

PERFECT!

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. Ephesians 2:8-9

GIFT!

For as great a gift my mother gave, my Heavenly Father gave me an even greater gift of eternal life.

I pray, in this week of Thanksgiving here in America, that you have received God’s free gift of salvation which bestows eternal life with God in heaven and not an eternal fiery separation in hell.