Mary, Mother of All Mothers

My daughter made this video a couple of years ago, when she was twelve, for me to use at a presentation that I was doing on Mary.  I gave her the song, John Michael Talbot’s Magnificat and asked to to add pictures for me.  This is what I got, from a twelve year old.

A little back story.

I love Mary, she is my right hand gal.  I go to her all the time when I need to know what to do or how to be.  When I want to be a better wife and mother, a better follower, I go to her.  She always puts me at ease. It is true that the closer you draw to Mary the more she points toward her Son.

It is a remarkable thing.

When Meg, my first (and the creator of this video) was born,  I lived away from my family. It was just my husband and me.  At 4 weeks she was diagnosed with Pertussis (Whooping Cough), something that can be fatal to newborns.  Something that is part of the initial innocculations because it is so dangerous to newborns. Part of what to watch for is them choking on their own mucous.  So, when she would sleep any little cough out of her tiny body could mean trouble and I would have to react quickly,  pick her up and put her on her belly and pat her back hard.  It was a terrifying and gruelling and lonely time. My poor husband…I barely remember him in this equation, I had one single focus and it was her.

We were quarantined, my little Public Enemy #1 and I.  This tiny little thing wreaked havoc to the point where everyone in the nursery she shared and in the waiting room where she went to the dr had to get shots or take antibiotics.  Two or three weeks into it, not sure, it is all a blur, I was so exhausted from the “around the clockness” of it all that I was on my knees and asking Mary, as the mother of all mothers, to “please watch over my baby, just for three hours, please let me get some sleep so I can care for her better.”

Three hours later I woke with a panicked start.  Ran to her bassinet and saw her sleeping peacefully…I, of course, felt her to make sure.  My chest tightens at the memory of panic of that moment.  She was fine.  I thanked God…for Mary.

But what happened after that I didn’t see coming.  She was healed, she never had that cough again.  The doctor forewarned me that whenever she got a cold she would have that cough, but it never happened.  I know Mary stepped in for me that night and that something beyond my understanding happened.  Mary has always had my back.  As the years passed Meg’s song became “Hail Mary, Gentle Woman” and I would sing it to her when she woke (as she did nightly) with night terrors.  When she was a toddler, she would be talking in her room and when I asked who she was talking to, she would point to the corner and say “the lady, right there.”  I never thought anything about it until I heard the story of Bernadette (which she was very fond of).  Clearly, there is some love between the two of them which was why when I saw this video a couple of years ago, I couldn’t fight the tears…it was beautiful.

Mary is the symbol of Advent. She was my hope that night.  She is the one who bears the HOPE of the world.  There is so much more to her and she deserves our attention. And not in a blue flowy robe sort of way, but as a woman, much like you and I, who walk through our lives in anticipation and in hope.  She is indeed full of Grace.

 

Tonight’s prayer

Tonight I light my candle for all of those who struggle with illness

For the parents, the siblings and the extended loved ones.

I light my candle because of the example of Mary, the mother of our Lord.

I light it with a sense of trust that God is at work in all things.

Please take a moment to share any of your thoughts.