Thank you to everyone who participated in our first annual Mother’s Love Writing Contest. I’m amazed at the power and beauty of your words. We received such a wide variety of submissions — Thirty-seven daughters and one son wrote about their moms, from six different countries!

What shocked me most of all was going to many of your sites and reading comments from your friends, family members, and even your moms in response to your words. THAT, my friends, was the whole point of this contest. I was grabbing my box of tissues while I read your positive words of love.

Now it’s not even 9 am, and I had to go to the store this morning to buy a big bag of greasy potato chips and comforting sour cream dip. Because this is stressing me out! Some of you dipped into a deep well of pain to write your essays, and from it you found forgiveness and even joy. What overwhelms me is the grace many of you give your moms. As adults, you realize she wasn’t perfect, but now you’re able to surround her with love. One of you wrote, “When I was a child, my mother knew nothing. When I became a mother, she suddenly knew EVERYTHING!” We should write this sentence on a bookmark and stick it in our Bibles, for those days when we feel unappreciated!

I hope this will inspire some of you moms who have children at home who may not be RISING UP to call you blessed. In fact, they may be telling you to GO AWAY. Well, there’s a message of hope from this contest, and that is — one day, they’ll appreciate you. So hang in there!!!

I’ve compiled all of the submissions into a file called, “Stories of Our Mother’s Love 2006,” which will be available to anyone after the contest. Please email me next week if you’d like a copy of this file. All of the submissions are under copyright of the individual authors, and I’ll add a little copyright sign to demonstrate that. For privacy’s sake, I’ve removed the pictures, and I’ve included only the name you have available on your blog. For some of you, that’s only a first name or a pen name.

It’s my personality to say, “All of you are winners — woohoo!” But I know we must choose only one winner — and you’ve made it very hard. I’m glad I’ve got other people to help me judge, and we’re going to use a point system that is used in other writing contests to make it a systematic process. This will force me to take off my blogger hat and put on my old English teacher’s hat and see if it still fits. We’ll post the winner here next Monday, May 8th.

I want to apologize that the link kept changing every day, so if you linked to the “Writing Contest” post, it kept changing. Sorry about that! I didn’t know how else to keep the post at the top — and I didn’t want to take a week and a half off from blogging! So here’s the PERMANENT LINK to the contest, if you wanted to update it in your archives.

If you wrote something in your blog or at this site for your mom, I hope you’re able to show it to her or give it to her for Mother’s Day. I’ll probably never know all the behind-the-scenes stories, but I know without a doubt this is something that has been on my heart from God. I REALLY appreciate each of you taking the time to write and submit something that I know took a lot of time and emotional energy. Thank you again! {{{{{GROUP HUG}}}}}

I’m working on a post that will announce several writing opportunities from authors and publishers who are seeking stories and poems like these. I’ll plan on posting these on Thursday and include links to the publishers’ and authors’ sites. So be sure to check back in and see where your story might fit. I believe many of these stories will be published in print form someday!

I also want to pass along the news that Sallie of Two Talent Living has gone on extended maternity leave, so she’s also taking a break from sponsoring the Carnival of Beauty. I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to write for this Carnival and fellowship with like-minded women bloggers! I had signed up to host in May, but I think it’s best to respect Sallie’s desire for a time of rest as she prepares for her baby. I’ve met so many of you through this Carnival — it’s certainly been a blessing!

If you’ve been a participant or a reader who has enjoyed this Carnival, it would be nice to leave Sallie a note to thank her for all the work she did in sponsoring. I’m sure she put in countless hours responding to emails and answering questions since last December. I know that many of us in the Beth Moore Living Beyond Yourself study met through the Carnival of Beauty. It’s been a nice way to connect with Christian women who enjoy writing online.