This isn't the first time I'll be spending Christmas without them--it's the second, actually. This time is different, though, because this year is the first Christmas that will be shared with a step-family. As the central point of coordination for gift-giving, I've been surprised and a bit alarmed at the flood of emails, inundating me with lists of gift after gift that will be purchased for them by brand new family members, eager to welcome them with open arms.
Each year of the last four has presented a new set of challenges, a new uncertain territory for my family. And somehow, the holiday season often seems to be the time when the highest of these hurdles are presented. This Christmas season, as I release my little ones (not so little any more) into the care of others, I have been thinking a lot about that other mother, that famous Christmas mother, Mary.
We Protestants don't like to talk a lot about Mary, lest someone get the wrong idea. But I think it's possible that Mary has some things she could tell me, and I'd like to hear what she could say--as it's said in Home Alone, "from a mother, to a mother".
I think about how it must have been, as a mother, to release the man that was still your baby, not just to another parent or another family, but to the whole rest of the world. So many other mothers, sisters, brothers, and miscellaneous claimants on his time, his attention, his life. It didn't just seem like there were hordes of people trying to claim him. There were hordes of people trying to claim him, some out of genuine love and devotion, but many for their own purposes, with their own agendas. His relationship with each of them would be part of his own story, and part of theirs, but not part of hers--she could only look on, with a heart full of hope and fear.
I think about how puzzling, how impossible, it must have seemed, sometimes, to hold on to her confidence in the promise of his destiny. Her job, her mission, was to nurture him to readiness for his part in a plan she could not know, see, or understand. So many people, events, and influences lay outside her control. I wonder how many times it seemed to her as if something must have gone horribly wrong. I think surely she must have second-guessed herself when things appeared at their worst--was this how things were supposed to be? And if not, was it her fault? Had she failed him, failed her task, failed God?
I might be wrong, but I think maybe she worried a little, just like me. Maybe she even cried sometimes. Maybe her text history would have looked something like mine:
I can't do this. I'm serious this time.
They need someone else. I'm just not up to it.
What am I doing wrong?
I know our situations are not the same. Obviously, she had a lot more at stake than I do. But to every mother, our own dear ones are The Ones. And for all of us, the lesson is the same. They belong to us, but they are not ours to keep. They have their own story to live, they are part of a larger plan that we cannot know or understand. There may be a path before them that is longer, harder than we would desire (and possibly greater than we could guess), but there is only One who can direct it. We can try with all our might to remember to be grateful that they have been entrusted to us for a season. We can look on, with fear and trembling, with joy and pride, and with unfailing hope; we can be there from beginning to end, every time they look back, fall down, or take off and fly. But ultimately, stumble or fly they must. And no matter how painful, confusing, scary, or downright crazy-making it might be, Mary, that other mother, with her heart both full and broken by her baby boy who was Emmanuel himself, tells me--hang on. It will be all right.
