It’s amazing how smart my mom turned out to be.  She just turned 93 a few weeks back.  She’s lost a step and can’t remember some things as well as she used to.  But back in the day, she was a pretty sharp girl!  We (my sisters and I) didn’t always think so.  She would warn us about things when we were younger and our response was often either condescending (“Yeah, mom: I know, I know.”) or outright disregard for her concerns (“Oh, mom: get real.  That’s not gonna’ happen.”).  She told us to be careful about stuff like what we watched on TV (“It gives people bad ideas.”), who we picked for friends (“Is so-and-so a Christian?”), and what came out of our mouths (“Be careful little mouth what you say…”).  She also warned us about stuff like crossing our eyes (‘cause they might get stuck), cracking our knuckles (“You’re gonna’ get arthritis!”) and the habits of worldly lifestyles (“Don’t smoke, don’t chew and don’t run with the girls that do!”).  She also taught us by example the importance of things like prayer and Bible reading, respect for those in authority in her life (especially God and dad), faithfulness, kindness, service selflessness, and the list could go on.  As I look back, she was much wiser than I realized back in those teen years.  The old saying is really true in her case: “Virtue is learned at mother’s knee; vice at some other joint.”  I suspect you might find that to be the case if you think about your mom, too.  By the way, more of mom’s wisdom stuck than I thought.  I ended up marrying someone a whole lot like her.