There is a verse in Hebrews that has meant more to me in the last few years than almost anything else in scripture.

"Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast." (Hebrews 6:19)

An anchor doesn't move you forward. It keeps you from drifting away. It holds you in place when the current is stronger than you are.

Christ is my Anchor. He always has been, even when I forgot it.

But God, in His mercy, also gives us human anchors. People He places in our lives who hold the rope when we can't hold it ourselves.

My mom, Donna, is one of those people.

This is her tribute. Long overdue.

I want to be honest with you, because that's the only kind of tribute worth writing.

For a long time, I didn't see my mom as an anchor. I saw her as a critic. Someone whose words, no matter how well-intentioned, landed on me like sandpaper. I bristled when she spoke. I assumed the worst of her motives. I kept my distance even when she was right there.

I wrote in my journal not long ago:

"I am thankful that I am living with mom instead of running and hiding from the pain I suffered. I am learning slowly but surely that she is not out to hurt me. She actually wants to love me."

That sentence embarrasses me a little. Not because it's wrong — but because it took me this long to write it.

The truth is, somewhere along the road, I flipped the filter. Every correction became a condemnation. Every suggestion became a sentence. I stopped seeing Donna the woman and started seeing only Donna my critic.

But I was wrong. And I know that now.

Let me tell you what my mother actually did.

When I was in elementary school, I would come home and climb into her lap to do my homework. She was there. She made space for me. That's not nothing — that's everything, to a kid who just needed to know someone was waiting.

She gathered me and my two younger sisters around her almost every day for scripture study. She had tapes — cassette tapes — that read the scripture stories aloud while we followed along. She had another set on the Founding Fathers. Another on modern prophets. She didn't just tell us these things mattered. She sat down with us, day after day, and showed us they did.

She also made visual guides — hand-made, step by step — for every household chore. How to wash your own laundry. How to do the dishes. How to clean the bathroom. She walked us through each one, not just once, but until we actually knew how.

And then came the white glove test.

She would put on a white glove and run it around the bathroom — along the baseboards, behind the toilet, across the top of the door frame. If it came back dirty, I cleaned the bathroom again.

It only took a couple of times before I figured out how to pass on the first try.

I thought that was strict when I was ten years old. Now I'm a grown man who knows how to keep a clean house, show up to work prepared, and take ownership of his responsibilities. That's Donna. That's what she built into me — not with lectures, but with a white glove and a lot of patience.

Here is something I want you to know about my mother: she didn't have an easy road.

She raised us through hard seasons. Mental illness was part of our family story — not as a shame, but as a reality that shaped everything. And through it all, she stayed. She kept showing up. She kept leading scripture study and doing the chores and waiting for her kids to come home.

I wrote about this in my journal:

"I was born to a father and mother who loved each other even when it was hard due to mental illness and the struggles of that we all have to some degree in this life. My mom hung in there even though everything seemed hopeless as well."

She hung in there.

That phrase doesn't get enough credit. There is no glory in hanging in there. No one writes songs about it.

But for a kid watching his mother choose to stay when leaving would have been easier — it means everything. It becomes the standard. It becomes what you reach for when your own life gets hard and you want to quit.

She never quit.

My father passed away a couple decades ago. And sometimes, in quiet moments of prayer and reflection, I feel like he visits me.

One of those moments stopped me cold.

I asked him — in the way you ask someone you can't quite reach — why did you have to go?

And what came back to me was this:

"I don't know but I do know God has a plan that works. See how much your mother has grown. She needed me gone to grow that much."

I sat with that for a long time.

She needed me gone to grow that much.

My dad wasn't diminishing himself. He was honoring her. He was saying: there was a version of Donna that could only emerge on the other side of the hardest thing. And she walked through it. And she became.
Dad sees her clearly now in a way I'm still learning to. But I'm getting there.

Not long ago, I watched my mom stand up in a fast and testimony meeting and bear her testimony of Jesus Christ.

I've heard her bear her testimony many times. But that day, I heard it differently.

I wrote about it that night:

"Mom bore a powerful testimony of Jesus Christ. She lives her testimony. She is a living testament of the power of Jesus Christ to heal. She is a living legacy of Jesus' power to heal sin and mental health."

A living legacy.

That's what a life of faithfulness looks like. Not perfection — she would be the first to tell you she isn't perfect. But persistence. Daily recommitment. Choosing to get back up and face the day and open the scriptures and believe that God is in this.

She didn't just tell me Christ could heal. She became the evidence.

The fifth commandment used to feel like a rule for children.

Honor thy father and thy mother.

It doesn't feel that way anymore.

I was meditating on the Ten Commandments in my journal a few months ago, and when I got to the fifth one, I wrote something I want to share here:

"Bless my mother's name forever for her works. Mom strives with all her might to bring to pass my salvation and eternal life. Often we try to do the work of the Lord with the tools of Satan: fear, force and condemnation. Bless my mother's name by recognizing the work instead of the tools."

Read that again: the work instead of the tools.

The tools weren't always perfect. None of ours are. But the work — the daily, unglamorous, white-glove-test, sit-in-my-lap, play-the-scripture-tapes work — that work was love. It was always love.

I spent too many years judging the tools. I'm done with that. I choose to honor the work.

In that same journal season, I was reflecting on what I actually have — what I actually need — and I wrote something simple:

"The Lord has blessed me with sufficient for my needs. I have food, shelter and clothing, plus the love of my mom and family. I'd say those are the absolute necessities of life:
1. Love
2. Food
3. Shelter"

On this Mother's Day, I have all three.

And I have them largely because of her.

She opened her home to me when I had nowhere else to go. She fed me. She loved me — even when I made it hard to do so. She let me drive her car and sleep in her house and find my footing again when the ground had shifted underneath me.

I also wrote, in a moment of raw honesty:

"My mom is the only one willing to take me in. I am so thankful for her kindness and patience."

The only one.

I don't say that to shame anyone. I say it because it's true, and because Donna deserves to hear it said out loud, in public, on Mother's Day.

I used to run from her.

I ran from the discomfort of being known. From the sting of correction. From the mirror she held up whether she meant to or not.

But running from the people who love you is just another way of drifting. And I have done enough drifting.
Now I see her differently. I wrote a prayer about it — just a line, but it said everything:

"Father, please help me see my mother as Thou seest her."

I'm starting to.

God sees a woman who showed up. Who hung in there. Who played the tapes and passed the white glove and bore her testimony and opened her home to her son when he needed it most.

He sees one of His most devoted daughters. A woman who became more through loss than most people become in a lifetime of ease.

Christ is my Anchor — the sure and steadfast hope of my soul.

And Donna is my little anchor. One of God's hands extended toward me, holding the rope when the current was strong.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom. Thank you for not letting go.

If you have a mother like mine — complicated, committed, and chosen by God for you — today might be the day to tell her. Not with a card. With words that are actually true.