A Mother's Heart

I found this not-quite-ready post in my archives, and I decided to finish and publish it today.  Because I'm on a roll here!  I go silent for three months...and then, boom! Back-to-back posts.  You never know what you're going to get at this blog!

I have mentioned this before here at the blog, but I just love the writings of Elizabeth Foss.  She is a homeschooling mother of nine, a grandmother, a blogger, an author, and a well-known Catholic "influencer."  Just like I did, she married her high school boyfriend, so I feel a special kinship with her. She's about ten years younger than I and still has a couple of high-school aged daughters.  But otherwise, she's very much in the same phase of life that I am: her children are grown and gone (or in her case, all but the youngest two are); and therefore, like all of us women with grown children, her heart is repeatedly being torn, scarring over, and then tearing again.  Not to put too dramatic a spin on it...but it does happen. Luckily, the heart it a tough organ.  Especially when it’s a mother's heart.

Elizabeth Foss lived in VA for many years, until a relatively recent move to CT.  She still has a column in our diocesan newspaper here in VA, The Catholic Herald.  Hers is the one article that I never fail to read when we get this paper in the mail.  Foss’s piece from the June 13-16 edition was titled "Note to a grad's mom,"* and boy-oh-boy, could I relate.   It's been a while since our last Pearl family graduation (our youngest son was University of Notre Dame, Class of 2015), but the memories of those bittersweet endings are still fresh.

Yes, graduations are not just endings but also beginnings (it's an overused cliche because it's true).  And there is so much to be joyful about, watching your children spread their wings and fly.  But they fly away from you, you see.  And a mother's heart takes a beating when that happens.  It still beats, sure; but oh, it aches.  The pain can be excruciating at times.

That Catholic Herald column of Foss’s that I mentioned above was inspired by witnessing a mom crying on her husband's shoulder after their child's high school graduation ceremony and party.  Foss writes, "The words of encouragement out there for moms of graduates all focus on a job well done and they pivot to look to the opportunities to pursue their own dreams in an empty-nest future.  And of course, those should be addressed.  Raising a child is no small thing. You deserve a hearty pat on the back.  But most moms don't feel like doing a jig.  Instead, they feel like they ran out of time.  There is a nagging feeling that we have so much more we want to give to the grown child."  

Yes, yes, YES!  This is spot-on--which is par for the course when it comes to Elizabeth Foss's eloquently expressed insights on motherhood.  

She continues, "I think that mothering people in their 20s is the most challenging mothering of all...Those are the things no one says.  It's not all over.  Buckle up.  Here comes the wild ride for which everything leading up to this moment has just been preparation."  I would only amend that last quoted section to read "people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s," because I don't even have any children in their 20s anymore.  (What?!  When, and how, did that happen?!)

Foss addresses this topic again in a June 13 post on her blog, In the Heart of My Home. She writes:

As I watch younger moms juggle babies and toddlers and big kids and try to be all the things for all of them, I want to assure them that it gets easier.  But I can't.  

I don't.

Because I don't think it does get easier.  It gets different.  In a lot of ways, it gets more challenging.  It's as if all the challenges of the younger years are designed to get you fit for the ones to come.

I was talking to an older mom yesterday about the choice we make to be peaceful with the way things turned out or to be bitter.  For some people, it is easy to be at peace.  For others, the choice can be the crucible where holiness is forged.

"The crucible where holiness is forged."  Wow.  That is some powerful writing, my friends.  And something to ponder…even for an extraordinarily fortunate mom like me, whose life has been mostly peaceful, whose heaviest cross these days is having to miss beloved grown children (and their children) who live much too far away.  

Because no matter how hard we moms try to be "all the things for all of them," we don't know what the future will hold for our children when they become adults.  As they say, adulting is hard!  Life will throw them so many curveballs.  And seeing them worry or struggle or suffer, when you can no longer make it all better with a Band-Aid and a kiss, is so painful for a mother.  Yet such is life here in the promised Valley of Tears!  Without faith, how does anyone endure it all?

If you can make it through the Mother-Son dance at your boy’s wedding without tears,
you’re a better woman than I!  (This is my baby, son #5.)

Well, I suppose it's time to figure out a way to wrap this all up.   

In a nutshell: yes, it can be scary having all grown children.  Worries don't magically disappear once your kids graduate from diapers, braces, and college; instead, they seem to multiply.

But so do the joys.  Case in point: check out this picture taken in July of our five boys and the five girls whom they married, and with whom they are raising 22 precious children between them (so far!).  These are ten of my favorite people on earth.  And if I hadn't let my boys grow up and leave me, they never would have given me these five sweet daughters to love.

Aren't these kids adorable?  (Rhetorical question, of course.  There can be only one answer!)

And here are a few pics of that high school boyfriend and me, after 44 years of marriage.  I'm so glad we ended up together; those five beautiful couples above wouldn't even be here if we hadn't!  (There are hardly any pictures of us together taken during the years we were dating, from 1973 to our wedding in 1980, because it was a whole different world back then--before the age of digital photography and home computers--and people hardly ever had a camera with them unless it was a big event.  Having these shots of us by the lake at Oyster Haven is very special to me!)

Life is good today.  And every day that I can wake up and say that, I feel blessed.

*That't the print copy title; online, the article is called "Note to the mother of a graduate."