Quality Mother Daughter Time

I'll admit as a teenager I didn't get along well with my mother. Apparently this is pretty normal for daughters and mothers. Fortunately I was able to grow up and realize that my mom is pretty cool. Today we are pretty good friends. We don't get to spend nearly enough time together, that's for sure. Dad's entered retirement, but by no means does this mean that my parents are spending quiet time at home and traveling the world for fun. No, they are busy traveling across the country tending to extended family members in need of assistance as they grow old. I'm grateful to the example my parents so me about love and compassion. In a rare moment, I got to have my mom with me for a long weekend. Leaving dad in the hotel to catch up on some football, mom and I set about Christmas shopping in the evenings after I got off work. We enjoy our shopping trips as all women seem so and dad seems just fine to not participate in this strange estrogen driven practice. Time went way too fast during our evening shopping trips. Just being with my mom melted away the absurd stress I built up in a work day. She's a comfort to me without doing anything at all. Which is nice.

The highlight of the weekend was the all day Time Out For Women Conference held at the Civic Center in downtown Phoenix. This event is a wonderful way that mom and I have found to recharge spiritually and spend some quality time together. The energy in a room full of three thousand women is powerful. Wonderful presentations in spoken word and song from the likes of Mary Ellen Edmunds and Hilary Weeks. We walked away feeling uplifted and never felt an ounce of our day was wasted. Thank you mom, for always supporting and loving me. She jokes that I'm her favorite daughter...I'm her ONLY daughter. All the same, it's great to have the support and love in those tough days when you don't feel the world knows you are alive or that you matter. To my loving mother, I matter. Because of the knowledge I have of both of my parent's love, I know it's only a sliver of what my Heavenly Father feels for me and I really feel blessed to have that comfort as I face each day.