It’s humbling to be asked to share this reflection and it has been a consoling experience for me this year in particular to reflect on Mary, motherhood, and my own role as a mother in preparation. I’ve always been endeared to today’s gospel reading--Mary’s Song, the Magnificat. It’s a passage that reminds me of spring--I’m sure because we pay special attention to Mary’s holiness in the spring, we celebrate as a community here at Prep in the special tradition of this Mass, but also because her joy in this prayer is so reflexive, it’s just who she is to rejoice and that usually feels hopeful, new and spring-like to me but, I must admit, that it doesn’t quite feel that way right now.

 

I have had a harder time relating to Mary’s reflex to rejoice this spring and I’ve realized that my identity as a mother has really been clouded by being a mother during a pandemic. Overriding my reflexes for joy, has been fear. Initially it was the fear that my boys would get sick or that I would get sick leaving them to care for me or that my own mom would get sick because of one of us—and so we hunkered down. And then, after awhile, I became fearful of that isolation and the changes that felt as if they were becoming permanent—could we do this by ourselves--holidays over zoom, school on screens? What will my kids miss out on? How will this change who they are--who they will become--what opportunities they have? There have been a lot more questions than answers, less direction, less to look forward to. I’ve worried about my kids, my mom has worried about me. It’s a lot for a mother’s heart of any age—it’s not what we imagined for those tiny little people that we cuddled while reading stories, that we taught to ride their bikes, form their letters, read. There are rites of passage that we have missed and that we will not get back. As a mom, you want the best for your children and this has been disappointing and hard.

 

I think about Mary, a girl who was much younger than me, when she was visited by an angel (unbelievable in and of itself) who tells her that her whole world (and the whole world) is about to be turned upside down--nothing will look the way she has planned, it will be unimaginable and much of it will be very hard. But Gabriel, that angel, starts by saying that she doesn’t need to be afraid and she believes him. That is my consolation as a mother from Mary in this difficult, historical season of motherhood. I am told over and over again in scripture to “be not afraid” and if I trust that and believe that, Mary shows me that my response will be to magnify the Lord and rejoice in God as a reflex just as she did.

 

If I take “be not afraid” at it’s word, it rubs the layer of fear off of the last year and it lets me see that what my boys have done is pick up new hobbies that they would not have had time before to try, they’ve deepened friendships because they’ve had to be more intentional in their relationships, they’ve become more sure of what’s important to them because they’ve slowed down and been bored and they’ve spent time with me that we never would have made in our busy ‘normal’ life. For me, being not afraid lets the disappointing and the difficult sit beside the intentional, the slow and the valuable parts of being a mom instead of veiling them in fear.

I’m proud to be the mother that I am—I’m proud of my boys, I’m thankful for my own mom and my grandmothers who taught me to be a mom, I’m thankful for the beautiful friends who mother with me in this wild ride of parenting teens and I’m thankful for Mary, the Mother of God, that she was not afraid.

 

Well to start, I don’t know how to follow her and even make it seem like we are related, but I promise, she is my mom, we are related, I guess I just didn’t get my speech giving skills from her. But seriously, I have no idea how I'm supposed to follow that. My mom has always had a way of knowing exactly what to say and when to say it. Even in the weirdest possible situations she always has a way to say exactly what I need to hear. I don’t know how she does it, especially since I know how hard it can be to deal with me. Like last night as it keeps getting later and later and I still haven’t started writing this and she just knows exactly what to say to get under my skin and make me start writing. Mom’s have an amazing ability to do that, they know exactly how to make you feel just guilty enough to do exactly what they want all while making you feel like it was your idea. All jokes aside it really is incredible. I know I really am not the most qualified person to talk about motherhood but when I think about my mom, I think about her strength and selflessness and her ability to always be there for me even when its hard for her.

 

In my 18 years of life, I’ve been through a lot with my mom and I honestly don’t know how she does it. She always puts the wellbeing of me and my brother before her own and never expects anything in return. It’s that type of selfless love that I have learned from her that I hope to pass on to my own children when the time comes. Everything I am, I owe to my mom. I look to her when I need guidance and she is always there no matter the circumstance. I know it’s hard when what I need to hear and what I want to hear don’t line up and I push back thinking I know what's best. Somehow, my mom trusts that what she is telling me will make me a better person and somehow she’s mostly right (I can’t give her too much credit, I mean I am still a teenager).

 

Trust, trust is the biggest thing I’ve learned from my mom and it’s something I will continue to learn for the rest of my life. Trust that god has a plan for all of us, trust that what I’m doing in life is gonna take me where I want to go. Trust that everything will be ok even when it seems like it's not. We are living in uncertain times right now and if there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that we can’t take anything for granted. So this mothers day let’s give our moms a little extra love, show them everything they do isn't taken for granted. Thank you mom, I love you.