To the Editor,

There’s an old song that tells us “My Mama Told Me-You Better Shop Around.” Do a lot of looking around before you decide she’s the one for you. Most people’s parents give them advice on important things like marriage.

We all know a marriage ought to last a lifetime. A lifetime is made up of days, and you don’t let one bad one cause a huge change in your life. My mother gave me some extra little seeds of wisdom to store up in that space between my ears. They were meant to make my daily life a little easier. She told me no matter how sick or bad I felt, every little bit, “you need to get up even if all you can do is walk around the bed and lie down again.”

Many years later I heard of people on long plane rides getting blood clots from sitting too long. She encouraged me to go on through high school and beyond when she told me, “Nobody can take your education away from you.” It would always be mine.

Neither my mother nor I knew much about cars, but we both understood what made the wheels go round. She told me to always “keep up with the oil changes because the engine is the life of the car.”

Money was terribly hard for both of us. We couldn’t keep track of it, or even make it go very far, but debt was serious business! She told me if I had a debt to pay and wouldn’t have the money to pay on time, “Go to them and tell them. They will work something out with you.”

One book in the Bible, Proverbs, gives us wise advice for our daily walk through this sometimes curious and tricky life. There’s so many questions about why things happen the way they do. Sometimes we try so hard–for years even–and things just don’t turn out how they were suppose to. Other times good or bad stuff just seems to fall at our feet.

The book of Proverbs repeats some of its advice many times. Maybe these are the hardest pieces of advice to put into practice in our lifetime. Maybe they are the most important to try to follow. For sure, we should take an extra look at them.

The whole Bible has nuggets of golden thoughts that are wise and wonderful ways to spend your life in victory. Everybody looses battles, but you can still be a winner in the end.

Mary C. Albertson,

Albany, Kentucky