Today’s blog is brought to you by Gloria Love, Rethreaded’s Holistic Services Coordinator. Gloria lights up our offices with her warm spirit and amazing attitude. You can find Gloria ready with essential oils, great advice, and hugs at all times. Today, she is sharing with us the beautiful bond she has with her mother who lives in British Columbia, Canada. While they may be thousands of miles apart, she is honoring her and Rethreaded with a Pave The Way Brick. We hope you enjoy her blog! 

I want to tell you a bit about my mother, Anna. 

Anna Parker was born in rural Saskatchewan, one of 12 children, raised on a farm with no plumbing, electricity, running water, or toilet paper. She shared a bed with two of her sisters, and during the winter they often woke up to ice on top of their blankets. They learned to sing harmony while scrubbing floors in the various rooms in the farmhouse. My father was a dairy farmer by profession and a pastor by passion. Anna didn’t finish high school until the age of 21 as she was often needed at home. 

From a young age, she could sew, knit, milk a cow, bake amazing bread, sing and do complex math in her head. She grew up learning how to find solutions to each and every need that was common to a family growing up in the 1940s and ’50s.  

As her child, I constantly reaped the benefits of her amazing upbringing. I too learned to sew, cook, bake bread, grow vegetables, sing and find solutions to every challenge life throws my way. I’ve had to live away from my sweet Momma Anna for the better part of 20 years now, and still, I reap the joys of her phone calls, prayers, and constant support of me as an adult. Every now and then I’ve had the joy of a visit home, or having her stay with me for a week or two.  

She was supposed to visit us in May 2020, but due to COVID, that was unable to happen. 

One thing my mother loved when she would visit, is to come to see me at work at Rethreaded. Anna always looked forward to the simple pleasures of sitting at the Rethreaded table to fold t-shirt towels, count jewelry hardware, or whatever task was needed as a volunteer. In past visits, I would take a break from my desk and wander into the Rethreaded kitchen. Anna would be sitting with a member of our staff either deep in silence or conversation.  (Both are beautiful in my estimation) Throughout this past year and with every phone call she asks, ‘How are the ladies’, ‘I’m praying for the ladies’, ‘More ladies are coming?  How wonderful that more ladies can join us, I’ll pray for them too.’

All this from an 89-year-old living in another country who deeply knows how love brings us all together. 

As that is not possible for a visit now, our family decided it was the perfect time to celebrate her life and legacy with a Rethreaded brick. My mother is a mother to all and she loves the ladies of Rethreaded as is they were her own daughters. When I mentioned to my mother that I would be purchasing a brick in her honor, she burst into tears. I am so happy to have the perfect example of a mothers love to be displayed in our new Serenity Garden. If I may, I would like to leave you with these thoughts in my own version of poetry: 

Here’s to all the Mothers Living on the Front Lines of Love

Here’s to the Mom who feels unseen and swamped with expectations unending. 

Here’s to the Mom in the trenches of parenting with challenges that are never spoken out loud. 

Here’s to the Mom by choice and action rather than biology. 

Here’s to the Mom on her knees, driven to prayer when her last ounce of strength is gone. 

Here’s to the Mom who has the grey hairs and laugh lines of a life lived in service to others. 

I cannot think of a better way to honor my own Mother, who has lived her 89 years to the fullest. 

I will leave a brick in the Rethreaded garden, so that all who walk its path know that there are Mothers out there, on their knees in prayer for our ladies. 

Love has no understanding of geography, time, or demographics. 

This is the legacy my Mother has left me. 

This is the legacy I aspire to leave for others. 

 Her Pave The Way Brick will say: 

Anna Parker

Faithful in Prayer

Full of Hope

Honor a loved one with their own Pave The Way Brick here