I'm Mom's Favorite

“Who do you love more?”

Every parent with more than one child will be asked this question, either outright or obliquely. There are picture books and essays and parenting tips all written to help with this quandary. The fact is I love them both so much. I would throw myself in front of a bus to save either one of them.

My husband and I have a tacit agreement - if it comes to one of the kids or one of us, save the kids. These declarations usually arise at the height of the tension in some bizarrely perilous scene that only Hollywood could concoct. But still, just in case we are ever hanging by a thread from a blazing F-16 and have only one hand to save someone, the rule is save the kids.

But of course, the kids’ question is not would you save Daddy or would you save me, but rather would you save me or would you save my sibling? After so many attempts to explain that I can’t choose, my answer is,“I’ll just let go and you two can save yourselves, if you don’t stop asking me this.” No, that’s not my answer, at least not out loud.
How can I choose? I can’t. No pat answer is going to satisfy them.
“You are my favorite daughter and you are my favorite son,” I say to my only daughter and my only son.
This only elicits, “So which do you like better sons or daughters?”

I love them both, not the same way, but so much I can’t quantify it. I love them each for who they are with a depth I can not express to them. I realize it is a depth of love that you don’t understand until you are the parent rather than the child. Why do Mom’s keep bailing out their irresponsible children? Hope, love that can’t be expressed, it runs so deep.

I am a daughter as well as a mother. I’m still suspicious that my mother loves my sister or one of my brothers more than me. Then I realize she loves me as much as she possibly can. She may be connected to my sister in a more significant way through the vagaries of life. My brothers are certainly more entertaining. That is just the way things worked out. But that doesn’t diminish her love for me.

The love a mom has expands with each new member of the family. It is not a finite amount to be portioned out, stealing some from one to give to the other. One gets all of his and then mystically there is enough for another full portion for the next one when she comes looking. Like the loaves and fishes that just kept coming not just until there was enough but until there was far, far more than enough. That must be an analogy to God’s love. It’s there and it just keeps coming.

If as a mother I love so very deeply and care so dramatically how much more must God love each of us? Just as it is ridiculous to believe a mother loves one more than another so it is with our heavenly Father he doesn’t allow one to garners more love than another. He may be pleased with one more than another on a given day. But this too, I, as a mother, understand.

As God loves us, as my mother loves my siblings and me, I too love my children with a depth of love that can not be measured. If it can not be measured then it can not be quantifiably compared. But try to explain that to a six year old.

In some of my less than stellar moments, when pushed I’ve retort,
“Who do you love more Mommy or Daddy?” (Say Mommy, say Mommy, say Mommy, I secretly think and simultaneously feel incredibly guilty for thinking it.)
Their response, “That’s not fair. That’s different. It depends.”
“Right,” I answer “it’s not fair.”

The question is impossible to answer it is a question that has no answer. Not because I am dodging or there is a secret I’m not telling but because the answer doesn’t exist. There is enough love for all of us and then some. All of us who are God's chidlren. Just rest, assured in that knowledge and let that knowledge buoy us as we get on with our day.

Michelle
October 16, 2007