Missing your Child on Holy Saturday

 There's a lot of things that come to mind on Easter, and Holy Week. There's traditions in churches, family traditions, grocery store traditions, you name it. For many it is a colorful spring holiday and a reason to buy chocolate eggs. The depth of Easter culminates in a myriad of meanings, the one central one being simply: love. Sacrificial love of the Father giving us His Son. 

The three main points that come to mind today are:

1) Holy Saturday is for missing your kids and having heartache for them like Our Lady did for Jesus. It's perfectly normal to yearn for your family and kids today.

2) Your cross is your vocation in life. Don't even try escaping from it. Not even for daily hours of "churchy things", because that just ends up being performative Christianity while your family is struggling to get basic things done at home without you. Food, hygiene, and preparing for the week go out of the window, not to mention ignoring family finances. This deserves a book, quite honestly. There's a balance between having family life and practically monastic life. God won't ask you to sacrifice your balance in life to be a monk if you are not a monk. If you are a wife, be a wife. If you are a husband, be a husband. A husband can't be a wife for his wife unless she is no longer a wife, and dead or MIA or a POW, and vice versa. I'll put the breaks on here for now. Perhaps at times it would be easier to be a POW than to be married, nevertheless, our vocation is our cross. And that Cross was heavy!

"I need you."

3) The people in your family each reflect Jesus in their soul...so don't treat them like garbage. I just don't understand how some very churchy people treat their own kids and family like they belong in the recycle bin. Where is the heart of Jesus in that? Vocation? I missed that too....Love? Nope...Charity? I think we missed that on aisle 4...Hope? Nada. We picked up despair instead. 

I once tossed my doll, Louis, to the side and now he stands over my bed staring at me. Just kidding.

Well, now that we got that out of the way I'd love to focus on point number one. On missing your children and having heartache for them today. Easter, more than any other Holiday is one where I often hear my mom say "I miss you and your brother." It is a weekend I often see a fog of sadness in the eyes of parents who talk about their child away at college, a child that has lost its way, a child even as an adult who is having problems. There is something in watching Jesus carry that heavy cross, get nailed to it and die that sparks pain in the heart of some sensitive parents. In a way, I think the pain of the Holy Mother is shared with us. Today, Holy Friday, her only son was dead in a grave and she missed Him like crazy.

Yesterday, the tradition in the Catholic Church is to venerate, or show respect and love for the physical wooden cross held at the front of the church. Each pew is given a turn to go in a single file and have a moment with the cross. The meaning is profound, in humility to kiss the cross that we have and accept it like Jesus accepted His Cross for us. For us to be selfless like He was with His Cross.

To acknowledge our crosses in life, our struggles, our challenges, our areas that we can't carry, and in the moment of thinking of the cross that Jesus carried, we thank Him for our cross and giving us help to carry it.  I wouldn't change my crosses for the cross of anyone else. God handpicked allowing my cross. (Oh! There is a huge difference between a cross that is allowed by God and a consequence of being irresponsible.) Back to the topic, where were we? Oh, kissing our cross. I gave this some thought as well. For me, not having kids is a cross. And not a day goes by that I don't think of kissing the chubby cheeks of my babies lost in miscarriage. Nevertheless, Jesus is present in each human being, in their need for compassion, mercy and love. Sometimes that means loving extra soft to a person near death and wiping the spit up from their mouth as they are unable to swallow on their own. Other-times it means loving with true compassion in speaking truth in difficult situations. To me, this search for loving others has proved to be healing in my maternal heart. I see the call for my love, my compassion, and my gift of myself in moments God gives me one of His children to care for. Do I stop missing my babies? No, but loving God's other babies helps a lot.

I think the basis of missing your child today is especially accurate because it was on Holy Saturday that our Lady was in her heart of sorrows, missing her only child. On the cross, as He was dying he said, "I thirst" and I asked myself this morning how many people in our lives are the suffering Jesus and thirst. They thirst for our service, our love, our generosity of heart, and our words of truth. 

I've been lucky enough to have a bubbly sweet mother, a loving relationship with Our Lady as well, and countless women who have shown me what true feminine love and strength are like. Today, if you miss your child and can't reach out to them, be a mom to someone else even for a moment. A text "I'm thinking of you, how are you?" can mean the world to the person who you know needs that heavenly love that you can give. 

In missing my six babies that didn't make it to birth, I'm grateful their intense love they gave me is something I can shower on others like falling cherry blossom petals. Have a beautiful and holy Saturday. Know that you too, are a child, and Our Lady loves you and misses you and would love nothing more than for you to spend a little time with her. "Call Mom".

We are like roses to Mary

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed are thou among women. And Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.