I
have a picture of her on my laptop with two of her grand children. She's
smiling. Broad. Wide. Happy.
She’s
been gone for eight years now, but it seems like just yesterday she was around,
cleaning, handing out opinions like they were garage sale items.
Now,
I'm adopted and was not flesh of her flesh, but in all ways important, she was
my mother just as I'm sure Joseph felt about his son. A greater love hath no woman for child. But she, like Jesus’
mother Mary, tried to keep a rein on me all her life. The creative beast that
lies inside me always wanted to pour out, and it showed itself in increasingly
insane and inane ways. But my mother did what Mary did all those years...she
prayed for her child. Mary's specialty was praying that her child, flesh of her
flesh, love of her life, would one day do what God had called him to do, prayed
that he would be great when called to be great. But I'm not at all sure she did
it completely willingly. She merely prayed that God's will be done in her
child's life.
My
mother had an eighth-grade education, wasn't sure about a lot of things in her
life that I was absolutely sure about, but she was loved by many, known by
many, many more around Meridian, Miss. She prayed many years that God's will
would be done in her child's life. My mother was no Mary, but she was a mother
equal in tenacity with Mary. She could never have kept things inside the way
Mary did, for she spent way too much of her time being like the shepherds and
telling all about her baby.
The
point?
A
mother's love is unique in this world. True love wasn't known in this world
till Jesus came. Therefore, the love between Mary and Jesus could not be equaled.
But
I must tell you that for good or bad, my mother's love must have been close.
When I was born, no shepherds showed up, no wise men came riding in, and there
were no celebrations in the hot summer Mississippi sky. But when I was adopted
three months later, a mother's love was born in a heart, and it wasn't
extinguished until she passed about 1 a.m. on Dec. 23, 2007.
When
the baby born in Bethlehem bled from the cross, it is instructive that no one
from the Nazareth Day Care was there. There was no one from the Nazareth
Elementary or the Nazareth Middle School or even those close friends of Jesus'
from Nazareth High School there. No friends. No, not one as they sing.
But
there was Mary. Mother Mary. All of Rome, all of its soldiers and its might,
all of Herod's brood, all the Sadducee's and those remarkably religious
Pharisees could not have stopped her from being there.
Christ's
love is amazing. The closest we can come, I suspect, is a mother's love
for a child -- a good child, a bad child, a child who returns that love or one
who is cold as December's heel.
We
call that love, and it is unconditional. It is how God chooses to love you, me,
us, all of us even those who choose to never return that love to Him.
We
could call it a mother's love and be done with it. The strength of the link
isn't weakened by death. Perhaps, just perhaps, it is strengthened. I miss my
mother in death much more than I ever missed her in life when I lived away from
her, sad to say.
I
wish she could have seen the churches I’ve been fortunate to serve. She loved
the church.
I
wish she could have seen her grand children growing up. I wish she could have
met her son-in-law, Blaine. I wish she could see Blaine and Carrie's daughter
little Emma, who dances, kicks folks in karate and plays T-ball.
I
wish she could have seen Jason and Becky's daughter Livvy and seen a seemingly grown
up beautiful Parker, her older sister. And I wish she could have met the wise
and funny Gavin. She loved the oldest of the lot, Gabe with an intensity that
grand mothers show. She would have loved seen him play ball and relished the
way it took her back to my playing days.
Most
of all, I wish she could be here for this Mother’s Day. But maybe in the way
the book of Hebrews says there is a great cloud of witnesses she is here.
Salute
them all, folks, for they are life.
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