welcome to imperfect prose on thursdays. this week’s prompt is “mother.” if you have a post that is even remotely similar to the prompt, please feel free to link up!
i wish you could have been here, in our living room, last night, to see the way She moved. the Holy Spirit, here amongst my boys and my husband and me, in my chair curled up around my library book and the boys in their avocado-green pajamas, squealing as Trent jumped out at the them from behind places and a crescendo of instrumental on the airwaves.
sometimes the most daily of moments, the peanut-butter and jam moments, are the most sacred. and sometimes they’re the hardest, and i’m not sure if there’s much of a difference anymore. between sacred and hard, but i’m learning that the Spirit– our heavenly mother, the feminine side of Abba Father, the breath that he breathed into nothing, making it something, even as the earth unrolled its ocean carpets and starlit skies–i’m learning that she makes it all bearable. like any mother would.
i’ve never been motherless. i’ve had a difficult relationship with my mum. i’ve watched her nearly die for three years. and i’ve seen God restore my relationship with her, since then. but i do know what it’s like to feel the gap, nonetheless, of humanity never measuring up. of broken people parenting broken people, and it’s no fairy tale. it’s the gospel in all of its grit.
and i’m learning, slowly, that i have a family in heaven that will never let me down. i have a brother named Jesus, who shows me how to live and leads me to his (our) Abba father; i have an Abba father who fights for me, who cheers me on, who provides for me. and i have a mother. i have the Holy Spirit who nurtures, who guides, who comforts and creates, and who gives me words and life when i have none.
i wouldn’t have known this except for a run one day under bleak alberta skies and the snow all white and cold beneath my sneakers, and God downloading visions of family, of what a family could be, and then him whispering that the trinity is just this.
and i think the Holy Spirit must always be aching, because i don’t know if a mother’s womb is ever full.
last year our house certainly felt full enough, with four boys ages four and under, and now with just our two again, it’s certainly emptier and i’m feeling the call to bear life again. not just physical (although i sometimes cry for the longing). no, not just physical, but a spiritual kind of life. the kind that produces compassion and mercy and grace and forgiveness.
so i’m leaning hard on the Spirit, letting her nurture and teach me, letting her make me cups of chamomile tea and read me scripture to sleep, because no matter how old we get, we never outgrow it.
our need for a mother’s love.
“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Gen. 1:26-27)
every thursday, we gather together to celebrate redemption. here are the details:
1. link up a post (old or new) that relates to this week’s prompt (or to a similar theme) 2. put the ‘imperfect prose’ button at the bottom of your post, so others can find their way back here (see button code in right-hand column of my blog) 3. read other’s prose, and encourage them! so won’t you join us, as we “walk each other home”? (ram dass)
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