In My Mother’s Arms

There are some stages of life where I have felt so close to Mary.

But motherhood isn’t one of them.

I remember as a young person, how I’d reflect upon her fiat, her unconditional yes and immense trust in her heavenly Father. My heart would swell in anticipation of whatever God might ask of me.

I still wonder at how she carried the Word made flesh within her body, a constant state of adoration in the midst of her everyday tasks.

And how she’d let her yes translate to an acceptance of whatever suffering her Son chose to undergo.

Yet, every relationship has those times of distance and motherhood, for me, has kept me from Mary. Why? I feel those aches and pains as I rise from bed, the muddled mind, and ask if she truly ever felt similarly, without the effects of sin. I contemplate if her home life could have really been that difficult, with a saintly husband and a child – one child – who WAS wisdom and love and perfection. I remember Jesus’ most likely miraculous virgin birth and – especially in the days leading up to the very real and painful labors to deliver my own children – I feel detached and even slightly resentful.

I want her to be the kind of Mom I can rant to; complain to; run to; vent to; to whom I can be utterly myself, no filters on.

But if I can’t feel that she understands all I’m going through, how can I be that open with her?

Then my own mother – to whom I gratefully can run to and rant to all the while admiring her – shared a little gift of an insight with me. Perhaps Mary’s years on earth are truly distant and different and mostly incomparable to mine. But she has been entrusted with the mission of loving and mothering all of us. She can, naturally, only do this from her heavenly place of honor if she knows us intimately.

Which of course she does. If the Son with whom her heart beat so closely for nine months wants her to be our mother too, He most assuredly shares us with her. She will be ever present, even when my mother is half a country away. Not only that, but she will be there to comfort and guide my children even when I can’t.

She knows, even more than I, what their needs are, what their fears and their joys are.

That child of mine, so beautiful and gifted, whom I can never understand – she knows him intimately. So when I’m unsure how to mother, or what the needs of my darlings are, I can entrust them to her and beg for her insights.

Am I feeling distant from my heavenly mother? That’s okay. Because she’s got my babies wrapped oh, so tight, in her arms when they feel distant from me.