Mother's Day and Mom's Deck

I have a full day today, Sunday May 8th, 2005. It is a balancing act between taking care of family and SS and Church and duties as usher this month of May. Sunday morning it is coffee and reading the Sunday paper with my sweetheart of almost 15 years. Her mother's day is a little sad, the first one without her son lost a year ago. I cannot imagine the pain with this. But she is doing OK and soon I told her I had to get ready for Church.

Karen opted out of going to SS and Church today. She chose a little down time, some private time she told me she needed. I offered to stay with her but she insisted I go and keep life as normal as possible.

I made SS a little late, but not too late for coffee with about 20 friends during the SS lesson. We are studing the book of Galations and Paul's dealing with the early Christians and the Jews during these times of the early Church. Jesus taught 'all' in is 3 years of his earthly ministry and this offended the converted Jews who felt, as they had been told for a 1,000 years that they were the chosen ones. You can imagine Paul and Silas and the Barnabas problems in diplomacy in getting these various and skewed factions to accept each other in the early Church. He had to be a good salesman. A good lesson given by Jim Byrum, one of our elders who rotates with 3 others in teaching once a month.

I had usher duties and had to excuse myself about 3/4 the way through his lesson but there were several who were either ushers or greeters that had to be outside the Church at 10:45am. We each got our boutiners pinned on and soon we were looking for members without bulletins or guest who needed to be welcomed. Once we take up the offering about 2/3's the way through, I put this in the secretary's office and we could each return to a pew and enjoy the sermon. Not hard work at all, but it keeps things running smoothly. We had about 100 at the 11:00pm service and I believe about 30 at the contemporary service at 8:30am or what is called "Early Church". We do not have to usher for this service as it is usually members who know what to do and after SS, they can leave at about 11:00am to have an early lunch with their family. It works.

I ran into a young lady who's son is in the service, currently in Germany but slated for 18 months in Irag in 3 months. Earnestine said he was anxious to go as the daily training each day in Germany is getting old and he is looking forward to getting this Iraq duty behind him. Earnestine is Irish like Karen's side of the family and she too is an amateur geneologist and she said she needs to call Karen as they are definitely on the same page in wearing out the libraries and trekking through cemetaries here in the Southeast. We had a great talk and I looked at my watch when we left and it was 12:30pm. Wow! We stood at the bottom of the Church steps and talked over 30 minutes and had no idea, no idea, about how much time had passed.

She shared one sobering thought. I taught her in Primary Sunday School Class, 6 to 8 year olds. I remember I was about 26 when they needed a SS teacher for these kids. She said she does not remember all her SS teachers but she remembered Mr. Nutter. Boy is that a sobering fact to find you taught people who now have grown children serving in the military. I don't know whether this was good news or bad. I told Karen about this and she laughed. Now that made it worth it all.

Sunday afternoon I spent some 2 or 3 hours sitting on mom's deck and opening her Mother's day cards and pinning a boutiner on her lapel. I got her checkbook and paid all her bills from this last week and balanced her checkbook all the time carrying on an antimated conversation with my mom of 90 years. I ask Ms Rebecca if anyone had called or visited and there were none she was aware of. This ommission is sad for me for mom. She is our mom and a southern lady that is so loveable and loves visits and cards and letters. But others have their priorities but they would have a hard time convincing me of how they don't see their mom, grandmother, aunt, or sister on mothers day.

I had a great day with mom and spent the afternoon with my sweet wife and we watched rented movies and had lunch and dinner together. She is OK and we told stories and laughed and remembered Jason in special ways. I hope your mothers day was as good as ours....Jeff Nutter in Birmingham, Alabama.