Mother Archives -

When You’re In a Hard Spot on Mother’s Day

May 10, 2019May 10, 2019

Are you in a hard spot this Mother’s Day? Just not sure how to handle it?

Maybe you’ve recently lost your mom and the ache is raw and deep. Or she’s been gone a long while and you find yourself just a little bit resentful of people who’ve had their moms around for so much longer.

Or maybe your relationship with your mom is complex. You’re out of sync with her. Perhaps there’s a long, complicated history. Or nothing more than the fact that you’re separated by geography, personality, or matters of the heart; it’s hard to bridge the distances you feel between you.

We want love to be simple but it so rarely is.

We especially know this to be true when we try to express how we feel about our moms.

The necessary pulling away, the inexpressible desire to be close – it’s more than most of us can negotiate easily, and certainly beyond words.

We feel the tension even when we’re young.

Two nights ago, my teenage son entered the kitchen and told me that as part of an assignment, he needed to read me a letter he’d written to me during Spanish class. He was laughing as he explained, saying, “I told my friends, ‘My mom won’t understand a word of this. She studied French.’”

True. So he translated each line as he went, telling me, “I am proud to be your son,” and “You make the best food in the world,” which cracked us both up because we both know the latter is patently false.

The letter was equal parts humor and heart; a perfect reflection of how difficult it is to tell someone why you love them – much less in a language that challenges you.

I’m up against this now – struggling every day to tell my mom how much I love her – because I’m not taking any day for granted. An illness does that. It brings everything into proper perspective.

My mom has stage 3 mucosal melanoma. It’s a rare cancer that affects the body’s mucous membranes and does not respond to chemotherapy. She’s been battling it for 11 months now through surgeries, immunotherapy, and radiation, and there’s a reason why people say cancer sucks. It really, really, really does.

My heart is so heavy with the pain and suffering she’s enduring. And I tell her all the time, “I wish I could carry this burden for you.” But she wouldn’t wish it on anyone. If it were within her power, she would forever prevent my sister and me from ever experiencing this torment. She would take it all on herself.

A mother’s love is all about sacrifice.

From the moment the idea of you was born, your mother’s every breath was a silent prayer of hope for your well-being.

It’s exceedingly rare to hear of a mother who doesn’t love her children more than herself.

Every day, she shared her very soul with you.

And she gave all she could in the hope that you would grow fully into yourself – the most beautiful YOU she believed you could be – a person who would contribute goodness to the world.

To the best of her ability – however perfectly or imperfectly – she displayed the self-sacrificial love of God, the One who made her, and you, in His image.

Her sacrifice, written forever in your heart, was God’s sacrifice first.

We were divinely designed to love.

There have been many times when I felt indebted to my mom. Like when I was younger and she’d done too much for me at Christmas. It was then that I told her, “I can’t give you what you’ve given me.” She always said, “You’ll do the same for your kids, or for someone else.”

We come up short when we try to return our mothers’ affections. But in the end, that was never their intent.

How do we honor our moms?

We acknowledge and thank them for their love and all they’ve done for us – with fumbling words, our simple presence, and token gifts if our moms are alive, or with our grateful hearts if they have passed.

And just as importantly, we recollect and recount that she made daily sacrifices of love, in big and small ways, on our behalf.

And then?

Then we go. And we do the same.

Simple Lessons from Our Littlest Selves

May 7, 2019May 7, 2019

Do you have a lifelong love? An interest or passion you’ve held since childhood?

Mine is flowers. I can’t remember not loving them. I look back through years of albums and there they are – random pics of lilies, roses, daisies, etc.

When we were little and living in Connecticut, my sister and I made chains out of dandelions and white clover (they looked like flowers to us!) and draped them around our heads and necks. We were princesses, ruling our tiny brick patio kingdom and its fuzzy caterpillars which we collected in Cool Whip bins lined with lush green leaves.

Flowers remind me that life – while fleeting – typically unfolds slowly. It should be colorful. Varied. Fragrant. Blooms and blossoms are part of a cycle which points to never-ending beauty.

Apparently, I was treasuring flowers even before I started making those dandelion chains. In the spring of 1975 when I was 2 and my dad (a Coast Guard officer) was out at sea, my mother and I rode the train down to Washington, DC, to see my dad’s parents who were living there for a short time while my grandfather took a work assignment from Boeing. We visited Mount Vernon, and I immersed myself in tulips.

For the next 40 years, that photo hung in my grandparents’ kitchen after they returned home to Seattle, WA, a treasured memory of a special day and a granddaughter they loved so much.

When I was 20, I visited the Keukenhof Gardens in Lisse, Netherlands, when the tulips were in full bloom. If you ever have the chance to go – go. The colors were extraordinary. And I thought of my grandparents’ photo and asked my friends to help me reenact it on the spot.

When I look at these two pictures – especially the first one – I realize that my childhood still has lessons to teach me. And here are three simple ones:

1) Rushing is learned. When I was following my whims and exploring those tulips – which were at eye-level when I was 2 – I felt no pressure. How often do we allow others to create stress in our lives? How much of our stress is self-induced? When we feel tension, we can ask ourselves – is this truly necessary? My pace is my pace. In so far as it is possible, we should embrace our personal speeds as the way we were made.

2) We have 5 senses. This may seem like a silly statement, but really – do you ever just stop – and sniff? Taste? Look? Listen to the natural world? My mind is a whirl of information and I can go days without appreciating the scent of my child’s hair, all the flavors in every meal, or the concert the doves, cardinals, and finches perform outside my windows every single morning. Are you reveling in the world’s delights like a child does? Like you did when you were very, very young?

3) Someone is looking out for us. Toddling among the tulips, I knew my mother and grandparents were close by and I was safe to explore. Small children are innately trusting because they can’t do anything for themselves. But along the way we develop skills to help us navigate, and then we become arrogant. We begin to think we’re actually in control. But that’s a lie. None of us is fully responsible for where we’ve ended up. Some individual somewhere along the way was kind to each of us, gave us a piece of advice, or opened a door of opportunity that enabled us to become the people we are. Today, let’s offer gratitude for that person (or people), and acknowledge the possibility that his or her involvement was not an accident or coincidence, but a movement of affection by a divine Source of Love that wants us all to enjoy a fuller, richer existence.

Our childhood selves – the purest, most untroubled versions – believed and hoped and loved boldly before we were ever told there were limits. We moved at our natural pace, opened ourselves to life’s wonders, and trusted that all would be well.

Though we learned that people – even ourselves – can let us down, God has promised us that He never will.

Our Father in heaven longs for us to follow Him with a childlike love – a faith and hope without constraint, made possible by a renewal of daily trust in His slow and steady work in this beautiful world.

5 Wholesome Things I Learned in January

January 31, 2019April 16, 2019

Wholesome. I love this word. It means anything suggestive of good health and well-being. It has a connotation of warmth and nourishment, virtue and pure intentions.

I’ve decided that for 2019, I’m going to end each month sharing with you 5 things that I found to be wholesome, because to paraphrase Philippians 4:8 – we are to dwell on the things that are true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, of good repute, excellent, and worthy of praise. In short – those things that contribute to the fullness of life that God intends for us. **

I know – that sounds pretty lofty. I’m not aiming for grandiose ideas, just everyday things I encountered that were notable, enriching, and/or helpful in some way.

So, here we go. FIVE wholesome things I learned in January.

If a woman can’t have her family with her 24-7, the next best thing is a beautifully framed photo of the people she loves. I’m rather picky about photo printing. Now that film has gone the way of the dinosaurs, it’s hard to find a shop that delivers prints with true-to-life color. For years I have been looking for an online company producing premium-quality prints, and recently a friend suggested Mpix.com. This month, I chose from a nice selection of mats and frames to create a birthday present for my mom – a gorgeous, ready-to-hang 8 x 10 framed photograph of her two girls and 4 grandchildren that was taken last spring at my youngest son’s First Communion celebration. She cried when she got it. First-time customers get 25% off for sharing an email address. Check it out.
The most important sentence we can say just might be: “Tell me more about that.” Jonathan Fields says this a lot when encouraging his guests to continue in the podcast that’s got me completely hooked – Good Life Project. The premise of the show is that every story matters, and Fields’s guests are purpose-driven, community-oriented individuals who have meaningfully processed both personal and professional issues. I’ve only been listening for about two months, but in January, I was gripped by conversations Fields had with Brene Brown, Bronnie Ware (author of The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying), and Mark Nepo (author of More Together Than Alone: Discovering the Power and Spirit of Community in Our Lives and the World). I also loved that my youngest son happened to hear the story of Maggie Doyne – a young woman who took a gap year after high school, only to find her passion in caring for orphans in Nepal and collaborated on the formation of a Nepali school, health clinic, and foundation for 350 children. Good Life Project. It’s good food for thought.
The memoir Educated, by Tara Westover, is going to become a modern classic. If you haven’t heard of it, I’m surprised, but before long you will, because it’s an unforgettable story of a girl from a survivalist family in Idaho who is barely home-schooled, yet manages to teach herself enough to enter Brigham Young University and then Cambridge and Harvard, all while trying to negotiate unspeakably complex ties between herself and the people who love her in profound and profoundly unhealthy ways. Like all great writers, Tara Westover has a gift for drawing connections between the visible world and its invisible undercurrents, crafting electrifying sentences like these: “I had come to believe that the ability to evaluate many ideas, many histories, many points of view, was at the heart of what it means to self-create. If I yielded now, I would lose more than an argument. I would lose custody of my own mind.” (p. 304)
Fermented goat’s milk from Answers Pet Food is healing my dog. I have two canines – Luna and Seamus. Luna is a Beagle with a host of allergy issues and she’s been suffering from a cough for months that comes and goes in intensity. We’ve been working with our vet to uncover the root cause, but three weeks ago a nutritionist friend suggested I try adding a natural probiotic – raw fermented goat’s milk – to her diet to help support healthy immune function. The fermentation process increases digestive enzymes, b-vitamins, antioxidants and lactic acid, and it’s been working. Luna is still congested in the mornings, but the cough is basically gone. Cheers to improvement in the lives of our fur-babies!
Handwritten thank-you notes warm the soul. Okay – so maybe I didn’t really learn this one this month, but I received three very nice notes in January that are worth mentioning here, if only to say that when you take the time to tell someone that what they did for you touched your heart, you WILL touch theirs too. We are so glib with our thank-yous these days. Putting pen to paper and expressing gratitude in a few thoughtful phrases means so very much. Consider how it feels to read, “You are a treasured friend,” “You are truly amazing and appreciated,” “I treasure the bond that we have and thank God for you regularly,” “Thank you SO much for thinking of me.” For February – let’s go and put more encouraging words out there in the world.

That’s it for January’s wholesome list! I appreciate your reading time more than you will ever know, and I’d love to hear what you’re learning too. Email me via the “Contact” link on my home page. Peace and blessings in February!

**This post contains affiliate links, and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links.

Do You Hear the Whispers of the Sea?

October 6, 2016October 15, 2018

God’s wonders from Corolla, NC. Collected in Summer, 2016. Gretchen Matthews.

In 1955, a little gem of a book was published – Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. I am blessed to have a very old copy of this book, with yellowed pages and a weathered turquoise dust jacket.

For today’s Month of Good News 2016 reflection, I want to share some of Lindbergh’s words at the end of her book, which reflect in a profound way, not only her time, but ours as well.

Perhaps we never appreciate the here and now until it is challenged, as it is beginning to be today even in America. And have we not also been awakened to a new sense of the dignity of the individual because of the threats and temptations to him, in our time, to surrender his individuality to the mass – whether it be industry or war or standardization of thought and action? We are now ready for a true appreciation of the value of the here and the now and the individual.

The here, the now, and the individual, have always been the special concern of the saint, the artist, the poet, and – from time immemorial – the woman. In the small circle of the home she has never quite forgotten the particular uniqueness of each member of the family; the spontaneity of now; the vividness of here. This is the basic substance of life. These are the individual elements that form the bigger elements like mass, future, world. We may neglect these elements, but we cannot dispense with them. They are the drops that make up the stream. They are the essence of life itself. It may be our special function to emphasize again these neglected realities, not as a retreat from greater responsibilities but as a first real step toward a deeper understanding and solution of them. When we start at the center of ourselves, we discover something worthwhile extending toward the periphery of the circle. We find again some of the joy in the now, some of the peace in the here, some of the love in me and thee which go to make up the kingdom of heaven on earth. (pp.127-8)

There’s an Echo in My Grandmothers’ Names

May 8, 2016October 15, 2018

It’s a picture I look at every day. One that sits on my bedroom dresser, reminding me that my job as a mother is not unique, and that if generations before me did, I too can get through any challenges I face today. Sometimes, I even think, ‘Perhaps these women are cheering me on.’

Who are they? They are my great grandmothers. Many greats, in fact.

But before we go there, let’s start here.

This is me with my mom, Kathleen, in January.

Yes. She’s beautiful. In all ways.

Now, here is the photo – of the mothers we share – posed in 1924.

The little girl is my mother’s mother – Elaine.

Diagonal to the upward right is her mother – Gretchen (my namesake).

The woman standing to the left, wearing glasses, is Gretchen’s mother – Ruth.

Seated, with Elaine on her lap, is Ruth’s mother – Sarah.

Seated on the far right is our matriarch, Sarah’s mother – Nancy.

Is a 5-generation photo like this one rare? Absolutely.

Is it notable that these women would want to document themselves for a future generation? I don’t think so.

I think that if every family’s women could have, they would have.

In fact, if we look closely enough, we find that they did.

In small, almost imperceptible ways, each one of our mothers – the immediate ones and the ones of long ago – have passed along a bit of themselves to each one of us.

My grandmothers each have stories, of course. But there’s not enough room for them here. So, consider with me for a moment, the role of names.

In Biblical times, lineage and names were very important. A name’s meaning was an indication of to whom a person belonged, their character, and calling. Today, the same can be true.

We do not live our lives in a vacuum. The same God who created us and our parents knows our every thought. Wouldn’t it make sense that His hand was in the choosing of our names?

In her book, Becoming Myself, Stasi Eldredge asks,

“Do you know what your given name means? It’s a good idea to find out. And if you don’t like the meaning you initially discover, press in to find out more about it. Ask God to reveal to you why he named you what he did.” (p. 222)

So let’s look my grandmothers’ names:

Nancy means grace.

Sarah means princess.

Ruth means companion or friend, and vision of beauty.

Gretchen is a derivative of Margaret, meaning pearl.

Elaine is a variant of Helen, meaning shining light.

Kathleen means pure.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that each name’s attributes are idealistic and intended to encourage its bearer to aim high.

And isn’t that God’s calling? For us to become like Him? With His support? To ultimately come home to Him?

I am descended from these women – born of each one of them. If I string my grandmothers’ names together – as a lineage banner over me of God’s love – I get a message that looks something like this:

I give you My Grace, dear Princess. Walk with me, be my constant Companion and my Friend, for I long to be yours and you are a Vision of Beauty, like a Pearl surrounded by ugliness. I have made you to be a Shining Light, a sign of my Pure and eternal Love.

Sound strange?

Check out this echo in Song of Songs where the Groom (God) speaks to the Bride (Us):

You are all-beautiful, my beloved,

and there is no blemish in you.

Come from Lebanon, my bride…

how much more delightful is your love than wine…

You are an enclosed garden…a fountain sealed….

a well of water flowing fresh from Lebanon.

– Song of Songs 4:7, 8, 10, 12, 15

This Mother’s Day, I looked back at my grandmothers with gratitude for the life and the love they extended to me down through the ages by virtue of their perseverance and hope. The names they gave their children are not only evidence of the desires of their hearts, but also of God’s heart.

Consider your name. Consider your family’s names, and how they whisper to you of Love.

The women in the photo I look at every day are more than just my grandmothers – they are examples of how I know that He loves me.