My friend Amy and I always talk about the mother we imagined we'd be. She was really, really great. She never lost her patience or for that matter, her car keys. She never yelled at the kids "Hurry up!" She didn't have to yell to hurry because she was never in a hurry. She had everything planned in advance, outfits laid out on the beds, library books all together on a shelf, and car keys on the hook. She was awesome.

She disappeared when the kids came. She was replaced with someone who had brain cells leaking out with the breast milk. She lost her job to the one who woke up crabby, locked the keys in the car, forgot the diaper bag on the day the baby's diaper exploded all up his back. She lost her job to me.

Now I realize that the mother I imagined I would be was actually a grandmother. She was patient because she was not lactating or homeschooling or having to wear her husband's jeans to Wal-Mart because they were the only clean pants in the house that would fit over her rolls. She sang songs because she was not worried about transferring money between accounts before another check bounced. She made cookies because she wanted to make a memory and she wouldn't be bothered by granulated sugar crunching underfoot in the kitchen. (Grandma also has a cleaning lady.)

I've let Imaginary Mom (or Grandma) off the hook as I realized that she was as much of a fantasy as the mom on a Hallmark commercial. I do want my kids to leave home with something that they'll treasure forever. (No, not a scrapbook, though I'll fill their car trunk with those!) The gift I want them to leave with is an abiding faith in Christ. I want them to be like Timothy in the Bible who could trace his spiritual lineage through his mother and grandmother.

"I have been reminded of your sincere faith, which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and, I am persuaded, now lives in you also." Paul writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:5. "For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in your through the laying on of my hands."

The true Mother's Day gift is to see our children walking in the truth. I hope you get that...and breakfast in bed, besides!