In the past few years I've been to more funerals than I care to count as my parents' generation crosses the threshold into all that is unseen. One theme that runs constant at the funerals for mothers is "Mom was a good listener." Despite problems they may have had with their mothers, when it came right down to it, their mothers were their close confidants. 

Like Mary, the Mother of Jesus, when mothers hear or observe things about their children, they tend to hold these things in their hearts and reflect on them. As their children grow, a mother draws on this storehouse of knowledge to help her children understand who they are and who they are meant to be.

For this reason, mothers have a trememdous influence on their children. Yet wise mothers, following Mary's lead, know that their job is not to control or constrict their children or deny them their mission. Our children are our offerings to God. The best we can do is love them, teach them of God's love, and send them on their way with a blessing similar to the one Moses offered the Israelites:

The Lord bless you and keep you!
The Lord let his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you!
The Lord look upon you kindly and give you peace! Amen.

He was the toughest kid on the block. As 10-year-olds, we didn’t admit it, but we were afraid of him. He’d take the ball we were playing with and throw it on a garage roof where we couldn’t get it. He’d knock our bikes over and then slash the tires with a pen knife warning us if we told anyone he did it he’d use it on us. We believed him.

So we would sit around frustrated and talk about what we’d like to see happen to him--like his arm getting broken or his accidentally stabbing himself. I said I wished he’d get hit by a bus. A week later running out of the drugstore with candy he had shoplifted, what I had hoped for happened. The police wouldn’t let us onto the street. We watched as his mother came, looked, turned her back on him, and walked away telling the police she wanted nothing to do with him.

I ran home crying, thinking that it was my fault. I told my mother what happened. She didn’t say a word. She just held me like Andy needed to be held by his mother and probably never was.

In the past few years I've been to more funerals than I care to count as my parents' generation crosses the threshold into all that is unseen. One theme that runs constant at the funerals for mothers is "Mom was a good listener." Despite problems they may have had with their mothers, when it came right down to it, their mothers were their close confidants. 

Like Mary, the Mother of Jesus, when mothers hear or observe things about their children, they tend to hold these things in their hearts and reflect on them. As their children grow, a mother draws on this storehouse of knowledge to help her children understand who they are and who they are meant to be.

For this reason, mothers have a tremendous influence on their children. Yet wise mothers, following Mary's lead, know that their job is not to control or constrict their children or deny them their mission. Our children are our offerings to God. The best we can do is love them, teach them of God's love, and send them on their way with a blessing similar to the one Moses offered the Israelites:

The Lord bless you and keep you!
The Lord let his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you!
The Lord look upon you kindly and give you peace! Amen.