Your Daily Miracle: Vocation

Lately I've been thinking lately about my dear friends who tenderly cared for their mothers in illness and eventually in death.  I've been thinking about the pain and sweetness they feel during milestones: a birthday, an anniversary of passing, a moment that they long to share with the person who bore them, raised them, and who called them Friend.  A daughter's relationship with her mother is never simple but it is one of the strongest bonds I have ever encountered.  I feel deeply the loss my friends must feel, but it is not a loss I know yet; it is a loss I dread and try not to think about.  But I want you to know, my dear, kind friends, that I am holding you close in my limited understanding and in love.  Here's a reflection I wrote for you:

I don’t know what it’s like to be without Mother but I remember when my grandmother died my mother saying in a voice half sing-song, half wail:  I am an orphan.

Which was interesting, because my Grandpa was still alive.  But I imagine that with the deaths of mothers, we feel orphaned.

For we lucky ones, mothers are the ones who love fiercely, not perfectly, but with a flame like a Bunsen burner, bright and strong to all the senses, without waver.  

Mothers shout one minute and then cradle their babies in sudden silence the next: tenderness and fierceness flow from the same hands.  There are no full-stops, only commas, breaths caught between instruction, laughter, correction,  words of love and reassurance, words of courage and challenge.  Mothers bind their children with thick ropes and feel them wound about them even when they have thrown their children to the winds, bidding them to fly. 

We mothers are the ones who keen loudly in our souls when our children hurt themselves though we must remind them of things like foolishness and lack of planning.  We are the ones who, at night, recount the day, the things we said.  We hope that our words bring our children life; we are aware painfully of our own brokenness.  We are the ones who beg on our knees on their behalf for mercy, health and a meaningful life, for goodness and strength and character and honesty and love.  We are the ones who ponder all these things in our hearts, who feel the tug at our own skin, the let-down of milk, the very physical nurture of our babies.  We are the ones who know that such intimacy cannot be given to us on this earth, in this life, without pain.  We are the ones who bear the sword in our souls.

Knowing this, I think of loss of Mother.  Too, I think of when you parented your own mother with gentle, patient hands, and I imagine how that must have been a sword in your soul to know you would lose her.  

You who are today without Mother, may you know that are loved and treasured.  May you trust that this love you pour without reserve into your children, your spouse, your community, your friends, into this good earth, is precious.  May you believe that the work you do is good and it is sacred.  May you be comforted that not an ounce of love is ever wasted, that it is the legacy your mother gave you and the legacy you give to your children.  May you know your mother is near.  May you know that God is Mother.  May you know that you are loved dearly, intimately, that you are known well.  And may peace be with you.