Today is my mom’s 86th birthday.

To say she has had a full life would be no exaggeration.

She is the daughter of church planters/missionaries and, when asked at age 12 what she wanted to be, responded that she was going to be a missionary.

Before WWII, the family served in Japan as missionaries, leaving just before the war began.  During the war, they continued to find ways to minister to the Japanese people who lived here. most of whom were confined and ostracized.

She continued her mission work after the war, stopping in Hawaii to wait for permission to return to Japan and ending up staying there working with a couple of churches my grandparents had started.

I think for a while in her life, she gave up on that dream due to circumstances in which she found herself.  Having to divorce my dad because of repeated infidelity, she took her 3 small children who were under the age of 5 and moved to Atlanta, where she lived for a time, until God made it very evident that He had not given up on her dream, and she was invited to return to Hawaii to help in the small Christian school that had been started.  We moved when I was 5 and she has been there ever since.

My mom is a rather quiet person, but you can’t let that fool you–she has a will of iron and can be formidable when she wants to be.  She is no longer able to drive and earlier this year moved into a beautiful assisted living apartment on the windward side of Oahu.

Her love for the people of Hawaii has been her passion for 60 years and that is her home.  She can’t go anywhere on the island, I believe, without eventually running into someone who knows her–a former student in her kindergarten class, a parent of a student, friends she has known for decades, people whose lives she has intersected in some way.

Although moving into an assisted living center has not been an easy transition for her, again, her strength of will has won out and she has settled in very nicely, attending church services there or taking the Handi-van to church at Sunset Beach, where she served so faithfully for many years.

I’m thrilled, because she is getting to live out her days in a beautiful place, staying in Hawaii which has been her home since she was very young, and she is surrounded by people who care about her.

I can’t take the time to go into a lot of detail about her life and the ways God has used her over the years and is continuing to use her to minister to those around her because I have to get ready for work.

I will say, though, that I am the person I am today because of her.  Was she a perfect mom?  Is anybody?  But her constant and consistent love has been there all of my life and she has been a shining example of how God can take our shattered dreams and create a beautiful life out of them.

Every day she gives me strength.

Every day, she reminds me about how important faith is.

Every day she shows me how to reach outside myself and be concerned and interested in the needs of those around me.

Every day, I am reminded of God’s beauty in nature and blessed to notice little things like birds and flowers–she taught me to do that.

I get to see her next week.  I’m excited to see her again, not just because it means that I get to go to Hawaii (again), but because the time we spend together is so special.

So…Happy Birthday, Mom.  I love you and pray that God grants you more years to serve and love Him.

See you soon.