On Tuesday, my son Liam had an allergic reaction to a varicella vaccine. In the span of time it took me to recognize that he was having a reaction, dig my phone and the Epi-Pen out of my purse, uncap the Epi-Pen and call the doctor’s office we had just left, his face had swollen until he was nearly unrecognizable and his right eye and ear were fiery red.
It continued to swell and he continued to become more and more agitated as we rushed to the ER and were whisked back to the pediatric unit. His silent, uncomfortable distress turned into ringing wails when the ER nurses swooped him out of my arms and began hastily strapping him to a papoose board and prepping him for an IV. I stood by, helpless, babbling incoherently to my son what I hoped were words of comfort but what I now suspect sounded more like panicked ramblings. The last time Liam had an allergic reaction his throat swelled up and he went into anaphylactic shock. It’s no exaggeration to say that at that moment, I thought my son’s life was on the line. It might have been. It was extremely difficult for me, his mother, to stand by and let other people take his life into their hands, even though they were trying to help him, even though they knew how to help and I did not.
The next morning I read Rebecca Frech’s article on Creative Minority Report as my son ran around the living room, a little delirious from exhaustion, Benadryl and steroids but otherwise none the worse for wear. Rebecca talked about how her understanding of the Passion had changed since becoming a mother, how she no longer saw it solely as the triumph of Christ but also now saw it as the time when Mary lost her baby. I’ve had similar thoughts since becoming a mother. The Passion has come to mean more to me seeing it through the eyes of our Mother, with whom I feel a kinship, than it ever did trying to see it through the eyes of Christ, who remains impossibly foreign to me. Christ was God, after all, and sinless and male, none of which are things I can identify with. But Mary. Mary was sinless, true, but she was human, and she was a mother, and she was young and probably frightened for her son. Those things I can understand.
But on Wednesday morning, for the first time, I realized that there was something fundamental to the story of the Passion that I had never recognized before, something that made Mary’s role in it all nearly superhuman. I had always thought I could picture myself in her shoes, standing silently, watching her son be tortured, watching him die. I thought I could imagine what that would be like. But I can’t. Not really. Because I do not have her faith.
It was physically difficult for me to relinquish my own son to doctors and nurses who wanted only to save him. If God asked me to relinquish my son to people who wanted to kill him, I wouldn’t do it. Not in a million years. If it had been my son at the Passion I’d have gone shrieking and screaming into the fray, fists flying, determined to protect my son or die trying.
It’s an understandable reaction, really. There is something primal that comes with motherhood, an almost animal instinct to protect your children. It’s an instinct that I’ve embraced at times and struggled against at times, but it’s certainly not an instinct that I’ve ever considered as antithetical to trust in God. Over the past few days I’ve started to come to the uncomfortable realization that it might be.
Rationally, I know that God loves my children far more than I do, far more, in fact, than I am even capable of. Rationally I know that He has a plan for them and that He will never forsake them. Rationally I know that the best thing I could do for my children is entrust them to God, loosen my grip a little and say, Here, Lord, they are your children after all.
But I’m no Hannah, and I’m certainly no Mary. I look at their faces while they’re sleeping and some part of me grips them tighter and thinks desperately, I cannot give them up, not even to you, God. What if your plans for them are not mine? What if your plans involve pain and suffering, illness, danger, or death? What if I give them over to you and you take them from me? I do not have enough faith. I do not trust you.
Yet the cross of motherhood is one of dying to self, over and over, again and again. First you have to let go of the self you loved to make room for these small, noisy, demanding creatures. Then you have to learn to love them more than you ever loved yourself. Then, when you’ve learned that and then some, you have to let them go, these people who now mean more to you than your own life.
My children are still young. I don’t have to let them go physically yet. But the spiritual part has already begun. It will take years until I am able to say, They are yours, Lord. I trust you, and even then I have a sneaking suspicion that I’ll say it with some trepidation. If the tears falling on my keyboard right now are any indication, it’s going to be a painful process as well as a long one. But that is what God has asked of all of us, whether we are parents or not…that we give up what we hold the most dear for Him. After all, He did it first for us.
2 thoughts on “Pietas”
Oh Calah, this is so beautiful. In my experience, thinking about those things is far worse than living them. I would have stupidly hoped that I could trust God and continue to think Him good had I imagined James’ story, but really I would have felt the way you describe above. Yet in the midst of it I found that I had two choices: darkness or Light, despair or Hope. Things were dark and scary enough as is so I clung to Hope and Light. I don’t know if that’s how it was for Mary but I think it may be that way for all people that God brings a cross to.
I changed my normal name here to protect my sons privacy, but yesterday, I received a call from my son’s friend telling me that he called her weeping and wailing that life was terrible and would never get better. He has major depression and has been under psychiatric care and is medicated…he also comes from a bad suicide cluster. He also doesnt believe in God. I went to where I knew him to be and there was no answer at the door..I banged on the door then I let myself in and screamed his name. Thanks be to God I heard his voice come from upstairs and I called to him to come speak to me. He and I spoke about the call to his friend…he said he understands why I would be afraid and that his depression is still very bad.
We spoke for a long time and I determined that he was not enough of an imminent danger to himself today to be hospitalized against his will but this is the landscape of where we live for now. His older brother (I have 2 sons- both adults- and one daughter) also suffers from debilitating depression and (although not suicidal today) has been so in the past and nothing would surprise me.
When I had received the call about my son, I was on my way to a funeral and I eventually got there. I started to cry not because I was sad over the friends death but in facing the reality that I was standing in the room where my son’s funeral would be if he did decide to take his own life…and then the piped in music played the “Starry starry night” song about Vincent Van Gogh killing himself.
I know what you are thinking because I was in that place once…”DO SOMETHING, DO ANYTHING TO PREVENT THIS!” And yet, the experience of another family in our area taught me that – in the end – if it is their goal they cannot be stopped. Please know that I raised my sons in the Faith…surrounding them with prayer before they were born and faithful participation in the Sacraments since infancy…they were leaders, alter servers, pro-life volunteers, & chastity speakers right up until their depression took over and they felt so abandoned by God that they no longer believe in His existence.
More than anything, I envy anybody who feels an assurance of their child’s salvation…feeing assured that your child would go to The Father upon death is something my inner self screams out for. My prayers look like a mental picture of myself as an old haggard woman banging on the gates of the Kings palace in the middle of the night begging for the souls of my sons.
And I beg God to reveal Himself to my sons…if faith is a gift then why weren’t they given it? And I wonder why God would allow this in my life when I have tried so hard to serve Him but the reminder that these things really happen is not so far away as one of my very best friends suffered the deaths of both of her children at term (one just before birth and one just after for 2 different reasons) and she has no surviving children.
and (getting back to the original post) I look at Mary as my exemplar… she was more willing than I and she had no others. Will she abandon me in this time? No, I know she won’t…I know she still suffered worse and knew that there was no stopping the process Her Son was in.
Please pray for my sons, for their minds and their souls, I beg you.