Mama's Day & the long goodbye

This first Mother's Day for me I was actually feeling a little sadness mixed in with the joy of being a new mom.  The truth is I was really missing my mom's mom.  We called her Mama Mog.  She passed away just months before my wedding 4 years ago.  Now that I am a mother I just really wish she would have gotten the chance to hold Carter and see me in motherhood.  I wish we could have talked about motherhood together.  Then I read this devotional today.  Praise God that I have assurance in Christ that I will see her again, and hopefully, I will be able to tell her all about Carter while we wait on him.  I am thankful we did have a long goodbye and I am praying for the absolute longest of goodbyes to Carter. 

"I came across 3 lines from a poem by Kathleen Norris... In 'Ascension' she writes,

'Now the new mother, that leaky vessel,

Begins to nurse her child,
Beginning the long goodbye.

The little person that made me a mother.

It was the phrase "long goodbye" that hit me. It echoes what we read in scripture, the prophecy that an old man named Simeon said to Mary the mother of Jesus when he was just days old. It could be today, it could be decades from now, but you will say goodbye to your child. Someday I will lose my mother, or my mother will lose me. Someday the same will happen with my son. 

This is what you sign up for in motherhood: the long goodbye. It may come sooner; we pray it will come later. But it will come someday. And that's the heartbreak. That's where every mother knows something the greatest theologian in the world could never explain- something Mary knew to the depths of her bones- which is that suffering is part of this thing called love, and the parent suffers along with the child. And we have a God who knows this rending from the inside out." - Sarah Arthur

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, and whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but shall have eternal life.  John 3:16

Mama Mog & I

My Mother, Carter & I

I am deeply, deeply grateful for all of the many wonderful mothers in my life and for the Lord's perfect design of parenthood and love.  May mothers everywhere slowly soak in all the moments of motherhood and make the most of their long goodbye!