Oh, Mary, don't you weep, don't you mourn...

Jerene held her new granddaughter cradled so tenderly and proudly, her face shining and happy. Amy brought her baby boy, the miracle child, to worship for the first time and I wept. Cindy is a new mother and my heart leaps for joy. Her journey through the valley of the shadow of death with the birth of her first born son has not been forgotten but is now transformed. Alison called to tell me Aidan, who has learned to crawl through the doggie door, fell and skinned his face. I remember getting a phone call from the sitter when Alison was two telling us to come home. She had fallen and skinned her face. Megan called and the not so joyful noise in the car was the descant for our conversation. And my mama fell yesterday...
My heart stopped when she told me. She is sore... a sprained wrist and some other aches... but nothing broken except our complacency. My mama is supposed to live forever even though Michael and Judy and Jeannie and Mona’s and Lisa’s mamas have died, my heart wouldn’t let me go to the place where my mama dies. Yesterday it did an I was plunged into the abyss. The old spiritual "Sometimes I feel Like a Motherless Child" has a different feeling today.
My mama... One of my tender childhood memories is resting my head in her lap and feeling completely safe as she brushed my hair. When I got bored in worship, mama’s lap was always available for a nap. For my twelfth birthday, she granted my wish (over my father’s protests) to have a permanent so I could have curly hair. She told me I was beautiful and because of her, I was. She isn’t perfect. The "Irene Gene", from her mother, that is sure bad weather is always just around the corner, was passed down to her and then to me. But she is my mama, my first experience of Love that knows no end. I know some people have had different kinds of mama’s ... mothers that hurt and demand are not Love. It is a hurt I can only imagine and one that I grieve.
Now, after the fall, I need my Mother God more than ever. She, like my mama, offers a love that is different from father love... both necessary, just different. Being a mother is first of all giving birth, whether biologically or emotionally. The act of creating new life, not holding back any part of yourself, jumping off into the river of life and taking the risk of swimming and sinking, drowning in the utter abandonment of one’s self for the good of your child, is truly a leap of faith. Mother God knows that feeling. Adam and Eve, the first children in our story of life, were given all they needed and more. The joy of watching them discover the world, seeing them grow and change, the conversations, the delight in their delight, was tempered by their falls. Our mamas have to watch as we learn the hard way, give us room to stumble and skin our faces, help pick us up, kiss our boo boos and let us go again, taking pride in our hard won victories and silently bearing our sorrows.
Today I need my Mama God to watch over my mama and me, to help us get ready for another separation. I pray that Jeannie and Judy and Lisa and Michael and Mona will feel the loving arms of their mamas in the gentle arms of Mama God as she holds them in her lap. I pray for all those children, small and large, who have never known a mother’s love, that they may find their way to the Mother’s Loving Heart. who is quietly watching over them, waiting for them to come home. My mama, who will go before me in death, will be waiting for me with our Mother. Thanks be to God for my mama and for every day being Mother’s Day in the calendar of my life.