{"id":10563,"date":"2024-05-05T18:49:19","date_gmt":"2024-05-05T18:49:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=10563"},"modified":"2024-05-05T18:59:55","modified_gmt":"2024-05-05T18:59:55","slug":"pygmy-in-stature-giant-in-character","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=10563","title":{"rendered":"Pygmy in Stature; Giant in Character"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/wifamilycouncil.org\/radio\/pygmy-in-stature-giant-in-character\/<\/a><\/p>\n

2024 | Week of May 6 | Radio Transcript #1565<\/h3>\n

When she stretched out full-length standing on her tip-toes, my mom was almost five feet tall.\u00a0 She always lamented that she had a belt-buckle view of the world\u2014and eyed with a certain envy those of us who saw considerably above belt buckles.<\/p>\n

When I was two years old, knowing I was adopted, a pediatrician told Mom, \u201cYou\u2019d better be ready for this one and have her under control quickly, because she\u2019s going to be a tall one\u2014a lot taller than you or your husband!\u201d\u00a0 Mom must have taken that admonition to heart because this strong-willed daughter figured out early on not to mess with, as I called her, my pygmy Mom!<\/p>\n

We joked that I outgrew her shoes\u2014size 5 and super narrow\u2014by the time I was four!\u00a0 And oh, how she loved her shoes!\u00a0 Heels, sandals, flats, slippers, boots, tennis shoes–you name it\u2014she had them\u2014and always in amazing colors and styles.<\/p>\n

In my teen years, when we\u2019d go shopping together, we\u2019d go to the petite shops for her and the tall girls\u2019 shops for me and then to the specialty shoe stores so we could find shoes small enough for her and long enough for me!\u00a0 We were quite the sight, I\u2019m sure.\u00a0 I\u2019m towering over the clothes racks and the women shopping in the petites.\u00a0 In my department, you can\u2019t even find Mom among the tall girls and their clothes!\u00a0 While in there, she\u2019d frequently take a pair of slacks off the rack and hold them up to her and just giggle.\u00a0 \u201cLook, honey,\u201d she\u2019d say, \u201cthese are taller than I am!\u201d\u00a0 And they were!<\/p>\n

The difference in our height was also apparent in a car.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t very old when we realized it was downright dangerous for me to ride in the front when Mom was driving.\u00a0 The old bench-style seats didn\u2019t offer a separate setting for the passenger side.\u00a0 So, here we\u2019d be\u2026the seat all the way forward and Mom\u2019s short little legs still barely reaching the pedals, and me, well, my knees and chin almost met and my forehead was perilously close to the windshield!\u00a0\u00a0 Needless to say, I spent a lot of time in the backseat, while my younger brother smugly sat in the front.<\/p>\n

But what I remember most about my mother is that while she really was short and petite on the outside, she was a giant on the inside.\u00a0\u00a0 She loved the Lord and sought to live a life that exemplified that she was a Christian.<\/p>\n

She showed that giant-like character in how she cared for her family and in her care for those who were emotionally or physically hurting.\u00a0 How many times we took in a teenager who needed a stand-in family and a place to call home.\u00a0 It was Mom who made the suggestion, threw the door open, and made it all work.\u00a0 She frequently made meals for people in our church or in our neighborhood who were experiencing tough times.<\/p>\n

Mom had the unusual ability to see the best in people.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t sit around gossiping or belittling people.\u00a0 In fact, I remember one time she went to a society function, and when she came home she announced she wouldn\u2019t be going again.\u00a0 All the women did, she said, was sit around talking negatively about other people.\u00a0\u00a0 That wasn\u2019t Mom.\u00a0 She was the one who frequently said to others, and especially to my brother and me, \u201cIf you can\u2019t say something nice, don\u2019t say anything at all.\u201d\u00a0 She practiced what she preached.<\/p>\n

Mom taught by example the Golden Rule\u2014treating people the way we would like to be treated\u2014 and she taught that skin color or disability or economic status didn\u2019t matter one iota.\u00a0 As we lived in Atlanta, Georgia, in the 50s and early 60s, Mom had plenty of opportunity to show us how to do just that\u2014and she did.<\/p>\n

When Mom died in February 2002, after over 20 years of battling Alzheimer\u2019s, I found the Bible she had most recently used.\u00a0 It was well worn, with lots of notes, underlines, and exclamation points in the margins and anywhere else she could find available space.\u00a0 I was reminded of how many times she would gather Jack and me after dinner, and we\u2019d read the Scriptures together and pray and of how many times I had seen her sitting quietly alone in her room reading and praying.\u00a0 In so doing, she set a wonderful, giant-sized example for her children.<\/p>\n

This commentary, while certainly a tribute to my own giant of a mother, is really a tribute to every mother\u2014regardless of her physical stature\u2014who has sought to or is seeking to rear her children to love the Lord and to walk in His ways.\u00a0\u00a0 May those of us who have been the beneficiaries of these giants of the faith remember them and honor them this Mother\u2019s Day.\u00a0 It really is what\u2019s inside that determines the size of a mother.<\/p>\n

This is Julaine Appling for Wisconsin Family Council reminding you that God, through the Prophet Hosea, said, \u201cMy people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Learn more at WIFamilyCouncil.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/wifamilycouncil.org\/radio\/pygmy-in-stature-giant-in-character\/ 2024 | Week of May 6 | Radio Transcript…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wfc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10563"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10564,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10563\/revisions\/10564"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}