I had the honor of being asked to give a short talk at Mass this Mothers Day on how motherhood has affected my spirituality. Here it is:
My husband and I teach the preschool CCD class, and one of
my favorite readings to present to the kids is when Jesus rebukes his disciples
telling them “Let the little children come to me.” We talk about it within the context that Jesus is the
special friend of children, and loves them very much. But in the book of Luke, there is more. Jesus goes on to proclaim, “Amen, I say
to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter
it.”
I had always thought that what Jesus was asking for was
innocent faith. When my children
ask me a question, they trust that my answer is going to be true and
correct. As they have gotten older
I tend to tease them with ridiculous answers more often and they have slowly
become savvy to that, but in general they take for granted that if Momma says
it, it must be so. Before becoming
a mother, this is how I interpreted Jesus’ words. He wants us to be equally believing and trusting.
However, there is more to my children than innocent
faith. And so, I think that Jesus’
metaphor must be equally intricate.
My children believe, but are not afraid to question. And question. And question some more. For them, there is no simple answer to a simple question,
especially when it comes to spiritual matters.
My mother passed away about a year before Chad and I
married. My father passed away one
week after my son was born. I
expected to grieve. I expected to mourn.
What I did not expect was how big and empty their absence would be. It did not feel like they were in a
better place. It just felt . . . lonely.
I was determined to make my children acquainted with the
grandparents that they had never met.
I wanted them to know that there were truly two sides of the family – my
husband’s side in the midwest, and my side, in heaven. And so I told my kids stories about
Grandma Pat and Grandpa Jim. I
told them stories about my own grandparents, too. I talked, and I talked, and I talked. I still felt distant from my parents,
but at least I felt that I was sharing their memory.
One day, my kids began to talk back. I remember laying on the bed with my
son when he was a little older than two.
We were talking about a special Thanksgiving Bread that Grandma Pat
baked every year, but the recipe was now lost. My son had a question:
“Momma, do you still talk to Grandma Pat?” I told him that I did.
He then asked, “Does she talk back?” I said no. He
wanted to know why. In our family,
we try to take our kids’ questions seriously and do our best to answer
them. So I gave it quite a bit of
thought. James interrupted my
thinking with his own idea.
“Maybe,” he said, “maybe up in heaven your voice gets very small, so
when you try to talk to people they can’t hear you.”
James continued to have more questions about heaven. Questions that perhaps could have been
answered with a neatly packaged response, but were that much more intriguing to
think about at length:
Where is heaven?
How do you get to heaven after you die?
Do people in heaven feel like they have been there a long
time?
Do people in heaven talk to each other about us?
Each time my son had a question, thinking about it at length
made me so much more aware of what I believed and what I was still
pondering. Each time I thought
over these questions, heaven seemed just a little bit closer. Although I believe that Jesus died so
that we might live forever, I had never pondered it as a reality. I had never marveled over the details
of that reality as my son was teaching me to do. For me, it all became so much more tangible exploring
it with him.
My kids continue to have questions. Sometimes their curiosity is insanely
easy to quench. For instance, when
I tried to explain the trinity, they accepted immediately that God could be one
while also three distinct persons.
They were unphased. This
would be the innocent faith.
However, some of their other questions, though decidedly childish, are
quite hard to answer without giving serious thought to what remains invisible
and unknowable:
Is God bigger than a cloud?
How fast is God?
How does God decide when to fix people and when to take them
to heaven?
Who are the angels?
How did God make our souls?
I will be the first to admit that it is easy to become lazy
in my faith. After completing RCIA
in college and being confirmed, it was a great temptation to kick back and say,
“well, that’s that.” But never
asking questions slowly led me away from the spiritual world until I could not
even find it.
So God sent me two little children - children who would show
me how to trust, how to believe, and how to question. Children who could remind me that Jesus wants us to be
curious about Him and interested in His world. Children who know the way to the kingdom of God, and are patiently
leading me there with their questions.
