No one should ever underestimate the profound power of a mother’s love. Not ever.” These are the words of Steve Mikita, who was born with a muscle disease that has confined him to a wheelchair for more than five decades.
His earliest memory is not about being frustrated that he could not stand, walk, ride a bicycle, or kneel to pray. His earliest memory, he writes, is of being kissed—a lot—by my mother. . . . In her arms, I experienced the priceless gift of a mother’s love.”
Every day until Steve was 18 and left for college, his mother was the first to greet him in the morning and the last to say goodnight, and she arose three or four times each night to turn him from one side to another. “She did it all, and without a single complaint,” he remembers. “She did it gladly and cheerfully. I was never made to feel that I was a burden. Rather, I was her son, and she viewed the service she gave to me as a gift and a privilege.”
His mother, and countless others, give all they have to their children. In ways large and small, day after day, they sacrifice and serve; they demonstrate courage, confidence, and faith. They willingly walk into the valley of the shadow of death to give birth and then continue to give life and love all their days. No mother is perfect, but most do their best to nurture, teach, and love.
Steve Mikita says of his mother, who passed away decades ago: “Without her love, I would never have come to know [God’s] love. Without her at my side during trial after trial, I would not have approached my life with a muscle disease with as much optimism, resolve, and resilience as I have. . . . It was she who taught me to believe there is purpose in trials. . . . Her love filled the gaps. Her love was my strength.”1
May the Lord bless and keep such mothers.
1. I Sit All Amazed: The Extraordinary Power of a Mother’s Love (2011), 32–34.
Program #4260
Musical Selections:
1. All Things Bright and Beautiful
English Melody; arr. Mack Wilberg; Oxford University Press
2. Home Is a Special Kind of Feeling, from The Wind in the Willows
John Rutter; Oxford Univeristy Press
3. A Highland Ayre – A Scottish Lullaby (Organ solo)
Richard Purvis; Sacred Songs
4. Spoken Word
5. My Mother’s Love
Janice Kapp Perry; arr. Nathan Hofheins; Janice Kapp Perry
6. My Favorite Things, from The Sound of Music
Richard Rodgers; arr. Arthur Harris; Arrangement Unpublished
7. Thou Gracious God, Whose Mercy Lends
English Folk Tune; Arr. Mack Wilberg; Oxford University Press
Music & the Spoken Word
A program of inspirational music and spoken word.