Woman behold thy son

Woman behold thy son. Son behold thy mother.

Mary, standing at the cross watching her son die, is faced with letting go of the Jesus who is her son and, by faith, embracing the Jesus who is her savior, her God.
Mary, the Mary of the magnificat, "my soul magnifies the Lord he has done great things for me." These were Mary's words at the beginning of her amazing journey into the motherhood of Jesus. Mary was the first to know Jesus as a human. Before he moved in her womb she knew that he was there. Mary held tight to him in the stable. The mother who took him to be blessed by Simeon. Who frantically searched for her lost 12 year old, for three days, while her wonderkind son sat in the temple, amazing the teachers. Mary, who witnessed his first miracle of turning the water into wine; she must have know of all of the healings and miracles, the raising of Lazarus. Mary was there to see even his triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Her son heralded as the king, the savior of her people, the Jews. What mother wouldn't blush with pride? Her beautiful boy fulfilling every great and wonderful prophesy. Not just loved by his mother but loved by many.
Through all of these moments in Jesus' life Mary, like all mothers, was in the process of letting go of her son. Slowly he grew in stature and wisdom and he grew beyond his mother. She was there to see him from afar but he had become his own man, God's own man.
We mother's the world over feel that appropriate but searing pulling away of our sons. They leave so quickly. Every mother has to let go of her son, that is the right way to raise a son. Slowly they break away they leave you. First to kindergarten then to middle school before you know it they are leaving for college and then for a wife or a career or a calling or maybe all three. The leaving, the breaking away is sometimes fast but often slow. It is the right thing but that doesn't mean it is the easy thing. Saying farewell to being the most important person to your son is difficult. Oh, our hearts cry out "Let me hold him like in the stable, let me keep those mean boys away, those terrible soldiers”.
But we can't do that. We, like Mary, have to allow God's plan to play out. Often a plan we can't imagine; a plan that seems ill considered. Mary must stand at the cross and decide does she believe God's plan is being brought forth or is this all a terrible mistake, a mistake that is costing her, her son?
At the cross, Jesus essentially hands his mother over to his beloved disciple. “Woman, behold thy son. Son behold thy mother”. He is saying his final good-bye to Mary as his human mother. His words tell her that he will not be her earthly son any longer. It is his final good bye to the mother/son relationship they have known. While dying and in agony, he demonstrates his tender care for her by making some final and practical arrangements for the care of his mother. A good son. Mary will go with John. John will take care of her and she will mother the grown John. The message is clear, Jesus isn’t coming down off that cross alive, this terrible event is not going to stop. It is continuing and Mary can’t see the end; how this can work out.
Now Mary is at a pivotal moment, can she say good bye to her beloved son and in that moment, in faith, embrace him as her savior, her Lord? Embrace him as the savior who loves all humanity as he had once loved her perhaps even more than he had loved her. Trusting God's plan, moving forward in faith and in hope. In the midst of this terrible occasion, with the celebrations only a memory Mary has the choice of trusting God or turning inward with her pain.
Isn't that where we stand? At the cross with a decision to make. Will we allow the love that transcends human love to open our eyes through faith? Will we accept God's plan for our lives knowing it is a lovingly wrought plan even when we don't understand the elements of that plan or how it could possibly work out for good? Through the web of pain that comes with being human we must find the thread of faith and hope as Mary did and embrace a loving and present Christ.
Mary didn't run from the face of adversity neither when she found herself pregnant and unmarried nor when they killed her son. Neither when she was given that son nor when he was taken away. As the horror of losing her son unfolded before her she stood in faith and in hope. Mary didn’t know what was to come next. It appears that she accepted her loss and within that loss found, three days later, that she gained a risen Lord.
We are called to stand before the cross with faith, faith in God’s enduring love, faith and hope that the resurrection will bring the all encompassing love of God and the peace that is beyond understanding even in the midst of our greatest losses even when we don’t know the end of the story, embracing that faith and hope as God moves us through the journey that is this life.

Amen

Better Parenting in 2008

Changing old habits is hard. I mean really hard. I have an irritating habit of kicking my shoes off as soon as my backside hits a horizontal surface and then completely forgetting that I did it. As you can well imagine the result is shoes under the coffee table, shoes under the dinning room table, shoes in the kitchen nook , shoes scattered all over the bedroom, under my side of the bed, under his side of the bed, at the foot of the bed, under the chair. You get the picture. It irritates me so I know it drives the rest of my family nuts. They persevere. I can’t seem to change this bad habit because I am not even conscious of the act even as I do it. It’s as if the shoes just skipped off my feet of their own volition. How can I change that?

Parenting habits seem to suffer the same problem. I do some things and I am not even aware that I’m doing them. The insidious part of parenting is that children do as you do not as you say. No matter how many times you tell them otherwise. And in that way my bad habits replicate into their bad habits. When I become frustrated and work myself into a snit, I am teaching them to scrunch up their faces and snarl when they get frustrated. When I put off making the final pageant costumes until 10 pm the night before the pageant they learn to scramble around the night before a project is due trying to find glue sticks and teal construction paper.

To be a better parent in 2008 means I will need to be a better person in 2008. This sounds terrible. I want to concentrate on them, the kids. It is so easy to see just what they need to do to be happier and more successful and more peaceful. I don’t want that reflected back on me. The harsh truth is that if I don’t want my children to make the mistakes I make then I need to stop making those mistakes. Easier said than done. Not something I can do of my own strength. Seeking strength through quiet time with God, talking time with friends and honest self examination is the path to correcting my errors, errors in the things I do and say and think. (Don’t think they don’t know the gist of what you are thinking, they do.)

If ever I need reminding that my bad habits are contagious I need look no further than the floor under the coffee table, and the dinning room table and the kitchen nook. There I will find not only my size 9 pumps and running shoes but little white sandals and little black patent church shoes. It is as if my big shoes invited some little girl shoes in for a chat. Such a visual reminded that my daughter will do what I do no matter how many times I say, at the height of hypocrisy, “If you put your shoes away you will always know where to find them.”

So maybe we will work on shoes this month. And maybe I can remember that I am a walking object lesson whether I like it or not. To improve my child requires only that I improve myself. Once again I am reminded that parenting is not for the faint of heart.

Blessings,
Michelle