“Where do you live?” she asked. Wind whipped her white curls into a crown around her head against a blur of golden wheat fields as we sailed along the dirt road.
I glanced her way. She sat slightly hunched in the passenger seat. We’d been catching up while I drove. Two long years had passed. I returned home to a widowed mom, visibly aged and mourning the loss of a husband and father we both loved.
“She gets confused sometimes,” my brothers told me.
Mom always got confused. That was just mom.
“What was I getting?” she’d wonder as she walked from room to room.
“What was I saying?” she’d stop midstream.
“Why did I call you?” she’d ask when we stood before her.
That was mom. Slightly distracted, but oh so perfect. Softly plump, with a contagious laugh. She listened intently and asked questions with such engagement as if nothing mattered more than the child in front of her. Not even the burning chicken on the stove.
“This is different,” they warned.
Mourning for dad had never seemed complete overseas. I was too detached from its reality, and perhaps she needed me in some way too, I thought dismissing their words.
I felt incomplete without that connection of loss shared with her. I needed to feel her warmth and sweetness.
Now I was home again, and she was next to me as I drove through the Kansas flatlands. We laughed and talked until I felt a change come over her. She became quiet and glanced at me sideways.
“Where do you live?” she asked.
I laughed a little, but an uncomfortable twist came inside my stomach. She’s got it on the tip of her tongue, I thought.
“Italy, Mom.”
“Oh Italy!” delight filled her demeanor. With a huge smile she turned toward me. “I have a daughter who lives there. Do you know her?”
“When my father and my mother forsake me, Then the Lord will take care of me.” Psalm 27:10 NKJV
The verse began a sing-song in my head. “When my father and my mother forsake me…When my father and my mother forsake…when my father and my mother…”
I resolutely kept my eyes ahead with my hands on the wheel, willing the question to go away.
“Do you know her?” she prodded.
“When my father and my mother forsake me…”
Mother’s Day is a day designated to honor the one who bore us. It brings pain to some. It renews gratefulness and joy for others. It acknowledges sacrifices and hard work. For those of us who have precious memories, a Mom’s love is just a droplet in the ocean of God’s love. For those on this day who wish for a different backstory, God’s care will still be triumphant.
A Mom’s love is just a droplet in the ocean of God’s love
Mom waited, staring my way, not knowing me. With all my heart I wished her to stop, pretend she hadn’t asked it and for the conversation to end. I wanted to get back to our old farmhouse, find my husband and cry into his broad chest.
“When my father and my mother forsake me…”
“My daughter Sylvia,” her voice became petulant, like a child’s plea. “She lives there too.”
Desperate to spare her, but knowing I couldn’t ignore the question any longer, I turned my face from the road and looked at those hazel eyes, clouded, lost and confused.
“…Then the Lord will take care of me.”
“Mom, I’m Sylvia.”
I saw the sudden recognition, hurt and pain. I saw how devastating it was for a mom to forget. And I knew that however deep a mother or her child’s anguish, God’s eternal care and remembrance far exceeds this parental shadow of His love.
“…Then the Lord will take care of me.”
There may come a day when the scene is repeated. When I will forget. And if that happens, may God the Father leave behind this certainty.
God knows you.
He sees you.
He remembers you.
“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!” Isaiah 49:15 NIV
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