To Be a Mother & Holy Irony

How many countless poems, cards, stories, proverbs, etc. have we read about what it means to be a mom? For sure, there is no higher calling or role- as we can attest given our own struggles to be or have a mom of merit or muddle.

But can it bear reflection again- containing perhaps a nuanced slant? Maybe I kid myself, but I have found the Holy Ironies in motherhood to be at once frustrating, infuriating, and awe-inspiring.

Holy Ironies are what I like to call those times when, as a mother, it suddenly slaps you in the face that the very thing you have striven to save your children from is exactly that with which they are now having to face.

We spend our mother-long lives trying to pad sharp corners and baby-proof living spaces. We orchestrate lives that filter as much harm and poison as possible. We ruminate over our own childhoods and parenting, vowing to keep and apply what is precious and cut ties and kill what is damaging.

And we spend time; we read to; we cull and collect; we enlist; we worry; we instruct; we participate; we try to anticipate around the corners, and yet, we still run smack into those Holy Ironies.

How can it be, we think. How can what I prepared and protected and proofed my child for and against for so long and so thoroughly be what s/he is suffering with right now?

And yet, if we are blessed enough to make it to a further vantage point, we are sometimes able to see past our own feelings of failure and frustration. We are able to get beyond blaming ourselves. We are able to piece together larger meaning.

We see that this is part of a setting aside of all of our mother-long lives. Painful. We see that some of the strings must be cut. We see that our paths diverge. We see that some of the bumps, bruises, and hard earned calluses are necessary for each and every one of us, and the protection that we strove for couldn’t last a lifetime.

Some falling is excruciating but indeed mandatory for us all to see that we have our own strength to stand again.

And maybe those Holy Ironies are indeed just that.