“Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.” Proverbs 31:29 (NIV)
This weekend attention will be focused on mothers and nurses. It is Mother’s Day and it is also Nurses Day. Mothers and nurses possess common personal qualities, among them patience, compassion, caring, humility, generosity, perseverance and many more. I cannot find a better tribute to mothers and nurses than what is written in Proverbs 31.
As a daughter of a nurse and a mother of two nurses, I’ve felt the love and compassion of these two generations which I served as a link. My mother was tireless in her caring for her children and for others. She sacrificed so much of herself to send her five children through college, producing a medical doctor, two lawyers, a public health educator and a law graduate turned administrator of a local water system back home in the Philippines. We all admit that without the nursing profession, we could not have made it in our respective careers.
I see the same qualities my mother had in my own children. And I am receiving the same love and attention my mother bestowed on me. I feel truly blest and I know that others have been truly blest for their compassionate caring, which nurses are known for. I could sum up the significance of celebrating Mothers Day and Nurses Day. Without mothers, homes would be broken and without nurses the hospitals would collapse. What a societal calamity it would be without them!
I attended a gathering of people from my hometown and a woman approached me. She said, I know you but perhaps you don’t know me. Your mother was the one who took care of my family and me. She attended all the deliveries of my children. She was so generous with her time as she provided post-natal care and as she taught me how to bathe my newborn baby. As she spoke of my late mother, poignant memories came back. My mother was not an ordinary nurse. She was a nurse who believed that she was God’s hand to care for others. She considered caring for others as her “pure and undefiled religion.”
No wonder, when she passed away at the age of 94, people from all walks of life came to pay their respects. The two-kilometer route from the church to the cemetery was filled with people I had not met. But they came to hold my hands and express their profound sympathy by saying, “Your mother took care of me and my children.” I had a great mother and I pay homage to her in prayer as I celebrate Mother’s Day.
Praise God for mothers and nurses! Many women do noble things, but they surpass them all!