On Mom and Mothers

She's a steel magnolia.  Raised in the red clay country side of Georgia as part of the "Greatest Generation", she will always be one of my four heroines. (The others are Frances Jo, my daughter Sara and my mother-in-law Nancy.) She is a wonderful alloy of gentility and strength of character. For me as an Army Brat, she demonstrated that as an Army spouse there is a kind of courage, character and commitment that is willing to move at a moment's notice to support her SOULdier in their service to our Nation.

This lifestyle, while sometimes gypsy-like, afforded my four brothers and me the opportunities to know life overseas with the challenges of new schools, new friends, new homes and new cultures. Mom welcomed these adventures without complaint or resentment. Her sense of wanderlust was contagious infecting our formative years for the good. As she moved out into the world beyond rural Georgia to places like post-war Luxembourg, Germany and France, she empowered her sons to take on growth through adversity with grace. As a traditional mom she never begrudged her sisters who sought to balance home and work. Neither did she disparage them.

One of the strongest teachings for me was watching the way she overcame Southern white parochialism, always according to other ethnic Army family members the dignity and respect they inherently have as made in the image of God. My brothers and I can well attest to the awareness that when with our Southern cousins, there was something different. Something liberating. And we never had to make a big deal of it.

Twice widowed and losing her baby, Captain Kenneth Alan Sexton to a helicopter crash in April 1994 she knows intimately the sacrifice and pain that irrigates the oaks of American liberty. Three triangular American flags are amongst her most treasured possessions.  Three graves lie shoulder-to-shoulder, brothers in arms who each knew the love and devotion of my mom. In her eyes one can see the pensive look of knowing; knowing that the role and duties of motherhood make for a bitter-sweet potion, drunk prayerfully and in abiding faith in the One who holds the future.

Married to another Army spouse, I am truly blessed to have served with my best friend Frances Jo. Like her mother, also a SOULdier's spouse she supported our military lifestyle while home educating our four wonderful Army Brats,  Ryan, Ian, Colin and Sara. Moving from Germany to Korea over a span of 27 years, she accepted the spiritual and patriotic baton from that generation.  With it she runs the race of faith in the same quiet confidence of her mother and mine. She continues to shape the hopes and dreams of our daughter Sara; who manifests the same vintage quiet confidence about God's call upon her life as she studies nursing at Virginia Commonwealth University. Fran and I know that she will glorify her Lord as a third generation Proverbs 31 Woman.

It is with profound gratitude and joy that I honor my ladies and other women who look in faith to Christ to fulfill their calling as mothers, whether by birth or by adoption. "Well done good and faithful servants!"

See you at the Potter's wheel,
G.K. Sexton

Strength and dignity are her clothing,
    and she laughs at the time to come. She opens her mouth with wisdom,
    and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.

Proverbs 31:25-26