My daughter is sick with what we think is her first cold. Other than gnarly cough, Penelope is just as smiley as her usual herself. However, a night or so ago, I was up with her around midnight when she started coughing a little more aggressively. As a first time mom, my anxiety was through the roof. After making sure she was breathing just fine and funnily enough, she was smiling at me after coughing, I stormed into our bathroom to get some steam going for her.
All the while, I was begging for Our Lady’s intercession. Not out of my own intention (but maybe the Holy Spirit’s), Penelope was baptized on November 19th, the Feast Day of Our Lady of Divine Providence. So I was praying hard, invoking all the different names of Mama Mary. I asked Our Lady to comfort Penelope, to hold her, to ask her Son to heal her. Amongst my anxious prayer, I asked the Lord for forgiveness for not turning to his Mother as often as I should.
I said, honestly, “I don’t know how to go to you, Mother. I trust you, but I don’t know how to go to you.” and I continued to ask the Lord, “Lord, help me love your Mother because by loving your Mother, I know I love you.” and so on, “Lord, help me know your Mother so I can know how to be a mother.”
Insecurities kind of come with the new mom territory, I suppose, but I realized something during that prayer. And I don’t say the following to bash anyone or to say mistakes were made, I truly believe my parents were making the best decision they could at that time. I realized that because my mom was working so much when I was younger (she’s a graveyard shift nurse and up until more recently, she worked 6 days a week) that I don’t have a really good grasp on motherhood because I don’t have an expanded example of what motherhood looks like. While I appreciate my mother’s sacrifice, it stung as I stood in my steamy bathroom, holding my smiley but sickly baby girl.
So I stood there, rocking Penelope, praying and asking the Mother of God, our Heavenly Mother, to guide me. I asked the Holy Spirit to help increase my love and desire for this relationship. As I continued to pray, I felt consoled knowing my prayers weren’t going unanswered. It’s not that Penelope’s cough went away or that she was totally calm (eventually she did just fall asleep, praise God!) but it was because I was pondering on why God would give us Our Lady and what a beautiful gift she is.
“Behold, your mother!” John 19:27
Today is the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God. What a beautiful day, friends. During Mass, as I held my snoozing baby, it dawned on me that my greatest tool to continue toward sainthood, to continue to grow in holiness in this new year, for me, is to grow in my relationship with our Heavenly Mother. Jesus did not stutter in his last few words; he was not scrambling or scatterbrained. He meant it. Behold, your mother!
I am confident that if I can grow in my relationship with Our Lady, that I can learn to serve better, pray better, and love better. For Our Lady is the Mother of all vocations. She leads us to the Son. As Father said today in his homily, “No one loved Jesus more than Mary.” How can I deny that example? How can I not want to turn to her and ask her for her guidance on how to be a wife and mother?
What a beautiful faith we have. God does not leave any stone unturned. If we’re honest enough with ourselves, where we lack, where we need to grow, where we are sorrowful, where we are broken, where we are lost, we can find every answer in God. For he knows us, and loves us. So it’s no mistake.
My mother wasn’t and isn’t perfect. She loves me, yes. She has done and still does so much for me, yes. And Penelope will probably say the same about me in the future. I hope to show Penelope that even though I may fall short as her mother, our Heavenly Mother is always there, always willing to hear the prayers of her children, always wanting to guide us to her Son.
This is my hope and my prayer for this next year…that I turn to Our Lady in my very vocation, in my day to day life, to ask her for her guidance, protection, example, and intercession so I can lead my wonderful family to sainthood and to Heaven.
Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! Happy Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God!
Jesus, Mary & Joseph,
Pray for us!
Pax,
Delaine