One year ago, I was put on medication to slow my heart rate. The heart clinic found that one chamber was enlarged, caused by a leaky valve. Was this unchanged from the effects of two childhood bouts with rheumatic fever? Or a new thing brought on by aging or other factors? Either way, my heart began acting up and put me in the hospital three times for cardio-version, a scary experience involving electricity and paddles.
During that time, and even before then, the following
verse became a favorite:
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. (Psalm 73:26)
Now my heart is strongly beating. My blood pressure is
114/50 and I only need to watch my salt intake to keep things the way they
should be. Even with good health, I often say this verse in gratitude to the God
who is the strength of my heart.
Today’s devotional writer applies this verse to a completely
different situation; the loneliness of Jesus’ mother, Mary. He mentions how the
day comes for every mother to let go of her child, to make room for others in
her son’s or daughter’s heart. Two of my children were married last year, but I’ve
never considered this the “loss” of a son and daughter, but a “gain” of a
daughter and son-in-law. Nevertheless, they give themselves and much of their
time and energy to their spouses. A letting-go is important so they might
establish their own homes and deepen their new relationships.
The writer says that a mother’s loneliness is related
to the depth of passion of her children. That is, the more deeply involved the
children are with their new lives, the more she will feel alone and left
behind. He says to multiply this ten thousand times considering the absorbing
passion of the Son of God in His ministry and then understand the deep loneliness
of Mary.
I’m not sure this connection is valid, at least not
for me. Aware of the problems caused by mothers who refuse to “let go” of their
children, I’ve made deliberate effort and decisions to release them into the
care of God, not when they married but much earlier than that. Who can control their
adult children? Who has the right to dictate or demand their actions? Love means
letting them live their own lives without interfering.
Not only that, it has been important to learn the
reality that God is the strength of my heart. I love my children and my spouse,
but not even family can fill that biggest empty space. Family cannot take care
of all my needs, emotional or otherwise. Only God can sit in that place.
Today’s devotional also describes the loneliness of helplessness
as Mary watched her Son live out God’s purpose for Him. The writer points out
that she could not “blast… his slanderers when they said he had a devil and was
mad” and was “utterly powerless to keep him silent when every word was ringing
out his death-knell.” How must she have felt standing at the cross and seeing him
“nailed there and hear the exceeding bitter cry he cried” and how could “any
loneliness be worse than that?”
I’m not sure what I would have felt in her place. I do
know that love as a mother means learning to put my children in the hands of God.
He is also their heavenly Father and the ruler of the universe. He can take
care of them just as He takes care of me. He is not only the strength of my
heart, but responsible for the ones that my heart loves deeply. Love does not
demand that I have any say in their lives.
Mary may have been “the loneliest woman in the world”
but I’m not sure of that she was nor that Jesus’ passion for His calling had
anything to do with it if she was. Because God gives me grace to trust Him with
my children, certainly Mary also knew that grace. She could watch and weep, but
she could also trust and pray. Perhaps she could rejoicing even when her heart’s
greatest joy faltered and then died because she knew that God was the strength
of her heart and her portion forever.
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