While searching for the original source of a quote I was planning to use, I came across this poem written for Mothers Day. And when I looked closer, I discovered that the Magazine I was looking at was published in the same month and same year of my birth. As I started to read the poem, I begin to wonder if my Mom felt the same way about me, her first-born son. Although my Mom is no longer with me here on earth, I knew her well enough that I could accept what the writer of this poem penned the same what my mother would have said in her prayer to God.

Because I am a mother
Help me not to ask one excessive favor
Of this child given to me.
Teach me instead the way
To pay my debt
To one young boy
Who, in his mother heart
Will have the faith there needs to be.
Teach me to seek no small return
For what I have to give.
Better, that unrequested
His smallest thoughts of me
Will be born – and longer live.
He is my blessing – teach me that –
It’s not me, but him!
Teach me to say,
“Make me worthy, God,
Of this, my son,
Every day!”1

I can only pray that when my mother closed her eyes for the last time, she was happy with what God had done in her little boy’s life and that it pleased her as well as the Lord. But this poem is not just about me, it can also apply to you. So on this Mothers day ask yourself if your Mom could repeat the same thing the writer of this poem expressed. If so, then you are blessed, and I’m sure your Mom will feel blessed too. – Dr. Robert R Seyda

1 Mother’s Prayer by Clara Hood Rugel, Good Housekeeping Magazine, May 1938 – Redacted by Robert R Seyda.