Unfailing Love

"Many a man claims to have unfailing love, but a faithful man who can find?" Proverbs 20:6

During my bible reading the other day, I came upon this verse and it really hasn't left my mind. I keep thinking about this unfailing love. I try to imagine what it really, really means to possess unfailing love. For someone to never stop loving you no matter what decision, action, or situation you could be in. I don't know how God does it. Like no matter how badly I screw up, He still loves me unconditionally. I think about how right this verse is. It is extremely difficult to find someone that stays faithful to unfailing love. I myself can't say that I have demonstrated unfailing love through everything. I racked my brain for days trying to find someone that proved this. I continued to come back to the only logical answer that I could find. The only person in my life who has stayed completely true to having unfailing love for me. And that's my rock, my comforter, my number one confidant, my Snokums, my Rabbit, my mommacita, my beautiful mom, Jessica Jean Galloway. 

It's been a really crazy twenty years being my mom's daughter. If you know her, you know she's pretty hardheaded and incredibly fearless. And more often than not it is extremely difficult to keep up with her. She excels in everything that she puts her mind to. (Except golf, just kidding Momma, you're ten times better than me and have progressed tremendously.) I think back to the first time I went hunting with my tomboy of a mother. I was four or five. Laying a warm blanket on the ground, she told me to sit quietly and read while she looked over the Bulverde landscape. Softly she told me to cover my ears as I watched the spike walk into the open pasture, and then mom took the shot. Sure enough, the deer disappeared into the tall grass, and I impatiently waited for mom to calm down from her buck fever so we could go see it.  Tromping through grass that was about as tall as I was, I joyfully yelled that I had found a rabbit. Mom kept telling me that those were the deer's ears above the grass, and I insisted she was wrong and that I would catch that rabbit. Without surprise, I was incorrect. And so begins all the times my mother was right, and I was wrong. Which by now, is too many to count. 

Her love for me has made her someone that supports me like no one else. She has come to all my major events through my life. And she has come with her screaming voice ready to go. I remember how she coached my eighth grade softball team with my dad. At times, I hated being the coaches daughter, but other times it was the coolest thing ever. Seeing my mom in action has to be the best motivator ever. I don't know how she does what she does, but she handles a position of leadership excellently.

She's been my go-to since I was young. Through every best friend breakup, every boyfriend issue, and every major setback I have ever faced, she has heard about it first. My mom is the greatest problem-solver I know. She handles crazy situations with ease and confidence. It is so admirable. I knew that if I told her I needed help with something, she would fix it. She always did, and if she couldn't fix it right then, by goodness she was wiping my tears and telling me she was going to. That was something I could depend on. That was my rock through every wrong decision or action that I made. And believe me, there's been some two a.m. phone calls that only my mom could have gotten me through. 

She's also been my strength. Losing my dad is incredibly difficult, but I know that I would not be the person I am after all of this if it was not for my mom and her strength. She was the first person I could see, although incredibly blurred, when I was pulled out of the ambulance the day of the accident. She crawled in my hospital bed with me, and sang to me until I could drift off to some sort of sleep. She was the first person I saw when I woke up the next morning, and she was the only person who could reassure me that even if daddy didn't make it, everything was still going to be okay.  She has calmed me down from nightmares and anxiety attacks like no one else can. She tells me that I am her strength and her pillar through the craziness that we call life in the past eight months and nine days, but that is wrong. She makes me strong. 

It amazes me that even after the terrible wrongs that I have done, my mom still loves me. It has never been a different kind of love either. If anything I feel like her love for me is stronger and more connected than ever after I mess up. I don't know how she can do it. It is so difficult to possess unfailing love, but I am so grateful that she does. No matter how hard I fall, how badly I mess up, how mean or hurtful I am to my mom, her love never fails. If my mom can love me like this, I can't imagine how much it is that God loves me. I don't understand how he can love us unconditionally and unfailingly, but I am grateful. 

Thank you for showing me how to be a great mother. Thank you for teaching me to be strong, determined, and confidant. Thank you for wiping my tears, singing me to sleep, and playing with my hair. Thank you for teaching me to do my makeup, walk in heels, and whip up a meal out of the oddest ingredients. Thank you for showing me how a wife should handle unexpected situations, how to love her husband, and how to follow her faith. Thank you, Momma, for unfailingly loving me.