{Sharing My Momma}
There were four of us growing up. If you were to look through our scrapbooks you would see us, happily making crafts, whining on sick days, building forts in the woods and enjoying scavenger hunt birthdays. It almost seems like a different world. In the background of all those aged pictures stands a familiar face. My mom. Lighting candles on our cakes, smiling in the center of our family Christmas picture. My mom.
In January, God brought three young children to our door. I watched as a most amazing thing happened. In five short months my Mom went from being mine to holding, cuddling, schooling and feeding a new set of children.
That first time I watched little Peach take my old place on that precious lap, gently rocking as mom’s fingertips made a familiar pattern on her little arm, a gentle, caressing movement, up and down. As Peach drifted of to sleep, I drifted back in time to when I sat there falling asleep to the whispers she would utter about plans for tomorrow or about the friends we be when I grew up.
At first there is a pang, not quite jealousy, but lump in my throat as watch her, my beautiful Mother, mother other children. Somewhere, deep down I’m not sure there isn’t a selfish part of me that doesn’t want her for myself. A part of me, that like a child with an old cherished toy, isn’t quite sure it wants to share.
But here they are, there she is, pouring out.
As I learn more and more about our eight year old little girl’s past, I willingly give the one thing I know she needs most – my Mom.
As I absorb more details about the the little boy, only six, abandoned, I willingly give him the one person I know who would never leave him, the only woman I know capable of loving someone else more than she loves herself – my Mom.
As I watch Peach slowly, painstakingly learn to bond, something so simple, so necessary, yet in her three years never taught, I give, willingly, the one person willing to spend every ounce of energy reassuring that tiny girl that she is loved, that she is wanted, that she will never be left, -my Mom.
The most beautiful thing happens when you open your heart to new love. When you have a new baby, when you meet a new friend, when you fall in love, your heart grows. It expands exponentially. Just when you think you can’t love anymore, God reaches down and pours His love into you.
My mom doesn’t love me less because she has three new children to love. She doesn’t care less because her cares are so much greater. She never redistributed her love, dividing it between its new demands. No, she loves as God loves. Completely. Openly.
With this understanding of how her love works, of how God’s mercy is renewed every morning, I can with an open and sincere heart, help make their scrapbooks, adding in all those pictures with that familiar face in the background… lighting candles on birthday cakes and still smiling in the center of our new family picture.
Trust me when I tell you
God. is. good.
and so is my Momma.
