A Mary Moment Monday post

Nine days ago, it was Christmas. Nine days ago, it was a whole different year than now, 2010. Nine days ago, I began a special novena to Our Lady of Sorrows.

Today is an anniversary our family will hold dear and commemorate for many years to come. It is one that marked a ripping apart, a journey into pain, a year of worst fears coming true.

We have spent the year in prayer. We have spent the year with many tears.

We’re not done praying. We’re not done crying either.

All year, I’ve found myself examining Mary in light of sorrow and grief and especially in her title as Our Lady of Sorrows. I’ve gripped her hand and tried to let her do the worrying. I’ve placed worries and tears in her lap, trusting that her Son would nestle there and have special consideration for that heavy pile.

I want to write a lovely tribute about my deceased brother-in-law who, I’m ashamed to admit, I’ve come to admire and respect so much more in the closeness that’s come since his passing. I want to share deep thoughts and life-changing insights, but the fact is…I find that I can’t.

For one thing, it doesn’t feel like it’s my place. For another, I am at a loss for words. Though they usually string together for me, this time, they aren’t. They won’t. And I’m not forcing it.

When we watch our loved ones suffer, we suffer too. When we find ourselves unable to relieve them of their burden, we are changed, however slightly. This year, I have felt helpless, and I know I’m not the only one. I have done what I could, but it has felt piddling and inconsequential in the face of the huge pain and impossibility of so many aspects of this situation.

I have, above all, prayed.

So often, I hate being reduced to “just” praying. I hate not being able to show up and do-do-DO. And yet, looking back over the year and considering my own journey through grief with the people I love, I can’t help but see a glowing lesson, one that points me to prayer.

Today, I will begin another series of prayers. I will embrace Mary’s hand and marvel at the familiarity I find there. I’ll look to her face and find it as tear-streaked as my own, and I’ll remember that she knows this well. Not only did she carry her own grief through the Passion, but she looks on each of us, her children, and feels, so keenly, our burdens of heartache.

Perhaps more than anyone else, Mary understands.

Mary, Mother of Sorrows, be a mother to us.

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Tomorrow marks one year.

Don’t get me wrong: I feel pain. We all do.

But it’s nothing to what my sister-in-law and his daughters feel.

So I am posting this merely to ask for your prayers in a special way in the coming days. It has been a rough holiday season, I know, though they haven’t mentioned it. And after a year, the pain is different but still very, very there.

And he is not.

And we remember that.

I’ve learned a lot about my late brother-in-law in the last year. My respect and regard for him have grown. And, for some reason, I feel quite a bit of regret about that, that I didn’t take time, make time, have time in the 38 years he was with us to explore him further.

Mary, Mother of Sorrows, be a mother to us now.

I usually notice it, mind you. This is one of my favorite times of the year. But I can’t help doing a double take more often when I pass a tree with flaming red leaf tips or a particularly brilliant patch of orange. I spy a combine in a field or a tractor pulling a load of grain down the road, and I think of how she’d be pointing her camera without a second’s hesitation.

Her enthusiasm for the changing leaves and the many forms of harvest all around has me smiling. On her way to take her daughters and our nieces and nephew to school, she’s bound to stop and take a picture. They laugh, but she challenges them to look around and see the loveliness they have taken for granted.

It’s so easy to take things in life for granted, from the exquisite fall fashion show right outside my window to the people who pepper my life with blessings. In this season of things dying and gorgeous color, I find myself reflective. As a foot edges into my ribcage, proof of new life within, I think of the life we can’t forget and the grief that hovers on the edge of our days.

I find myself wondering if there were flowers blooming on the path winding to Golgotha, if there was evidence of hope even there, in the desolation surrounding the Cross. I clutch my rosary this month, in the midst of rainbows in trees and cerulean skies and apples everywhere, and I think of how it took the Cross to achieve the Resurrection.

There’s some comfort in that, but it’s distant somehow. The fact that there’s a host of shocking color and breathtaking splendor everywhere I drive feels more concrete, more like evidence of God’s love and His hand in the working of things.

Fall is a time of things dying, and the dying is beautiful. How can this be? When I examine it closer, I struggle to apply it, to make it more than a theory that applies only to agriculture and nature.

These pictures I found on my camera, evidence of a passion that can’t be dampened even in the face of heartache and tragedy, give me hope the same way that meditating on the crucifix gives me hope. They speak to me of so much more than Ohio autumns and someone with an eye for my taste.

There is hope. There is always hope.

I think this must be the way that Mary, even as she faced the incredible pain of the Cross, comforted the disciples and those around her. I think of my sister-in-law, facing her own struggles, as my very own Mary, living proof that God not only loves me, but that He will reach down constantly and touch me through every aspect of my life.

Maybe, in fact, that’s what we are to each other, each of us, as we face the uncertainties of life and the hurdles in front of us. Maybe we have Mary beside us to guide us in how we are to minister to each other, how we are to, most importantly, love each other.

For that, I’m thankful. With a dose of apple butter and a bright streak of maple leaves on top.

Another in the Mary Moment Monday series

This week, on September 15, we celebrate one of my favorite feasts of Mary, the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows.

She’s a special Mary to me, one who’s close to my heart, who knows my heart, who speaks to my heart. She’s the Mary who holds me when I let my guard down and just sob, when I shake my fist and God and ask Him what in the world He could be thinking, when I throw tantrums and stomp away and then curl up in a heap.

Suffering unites us in a way few other things can. Being able to picture Mary wracked with grief, torn apart with pain, clinging to a scrap of hope despite the torture of continuing to live…somehow, this makes her approachable in the midst of the turmoil of my life. I see her there, at eye level for once, and I recognize the tears hovering, ready to fall. She comes closer, offering me her shoulder: not advice, not an admonition to toughen up, not anything more than just herself.

I haven’t suffered greatly, not really. But I have watched, many times helplessly, as others have suffered. Maybe that is its own special kind of suffering, the suffering where you watch those you love and the only help you can offer is turning your tear-streaked face to God.

This week, when I see evidence of the many ways in which my life is filled with blessings and not filled with suffering, I’ll be reaching out to my Mother of Sorrows. When I see horror in my world, injustice and unfairness, or just plain mean “life ain’t fair”-ness, she’ll be the one I ask for help. I’ll greet my old friend Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows, and we’ll hug through the tears that will inevitably flow.

In that vein, if you have any special intentions you’d like me to remember this week, feel free to let me know. Maybe I can take them to Mother Mary on your behalf.

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My latest column is over at Faith & Family Live: “Turning to Mary in Suffering.” I share a few favorite devotions and some reflections that came out with tears, no extra charge. This ranks as one of the more painful pieces I’ve written, and I’ll admit to you…I tried to avoid it. I attempted to write a more sterile, less personal piece. What came out, and what just would not go away, was the start you’ll read over there. (Because, yes, I have more to say. I just couldn’t get it all out.)

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Last year, over at Today’s Catholic Woman, I wrote a feature about Our Lady of Sorrows. If you’re interested in the history of the title and a bit more of my own take on this title, you might stop over and give it a peek.

image from Marian Mantle

On Sunday, we celebrate the Feast of the Assumption.

I’ve written about it at Faith and Family Live, but it remains something strange to me, something I’m just not used to. It’s hard to explain how I’m drawn to it — it’s a feast of Mama Mary, after all! — and how I’m confused by it, how I want to celebrate and how I struggle to justify my joy, how I tear up and how I look heavenward.

I think it’s lovely, don’t get me wrong. It’s an example of how God loves me personally and all of us individually. He thinks enough of us to make sure we have a heavenly mother! He is sharing His Own mom!

This year has been a whirlwind. It started with a death that rocked our world and continued with terrifying health problems with our oldest daughter. It has included news of a pregnancy and watching the ongoing health struggles of Poppa Gene.

There have been a lot of tears this year, more in eight months than I would have thought an entire decade could hold.

And so it is that we come to a major Marian feast, the Assumption.

It is on this day, as the Church celebrates the Mother of God and her glorious entry into heaven, that my sister-in-law will come “home” to Ohio. She and her girls are coming in a caravan of Reinhard brothers.

She’ll be surrounded once she’s here, and yet I know that she’s going to feel more alone than ever. She’s going to have family at every turn, and yet I know that there will be a glaring absence, one that, though healed by time, is always present. She will smile and cry and hide what she can. She will muddle forward, do her best, get through it and over it and around it.

There’s something beautiful about this painful day being on a feast of Mary. I have felt, over the years of watching this sister-in-law hero of mine, that she has a very special place in Mary’s heart. From her openness about her story to her unwavering faith, she continues to show me the path to Mary, the way through the sorrow and the heartache. She shakes her fist and throws things across the room, but she also drinks a beer and laughs heartily. She picks the splinters out of her feet and tosses them in the face of the one tempting her to give up.

She’s spunky, this sister-in-law of mine, and it does all of us good to have a taste of that in our lives. I’d carry her cross for her if I could, I’d hold her head in mine. I’ve watched her mother sob, unable to help her daughter more, wanting to take the pain and make it go away, and I’ve felt utterly and completely helpless.

Sometimes, when I’m paying attention, I get a glimpse of God’s grace. This year, the Feast of the Assumption feels like one such grace. It feels like Mary reaching down and letting us know that Allen’s regaling her with stories and playing ball with his boys.

A Mary Moment Monday post

(Yes, I realize this is the second Mary Moment Monday post today. But this is for Susie. I wrote it yesterday and asked her permission to publish it. I hadn’t heard from her this morning, so I scrapped it. She just wrote me, and told me she was touched to have me reflecting on Allen’s birthday. And so, for Susie, here is the second post for today…an exception made for an exceptional hero of mine.)

Dear Allen,

It’s your birthday, but it won’t be a day we’re celebrating. To call you and wish you a happy day, we’ll have to kneel and fold our hands. This is a birthday that you’re celebrating in heaven.

I’ve been thinking of you a lot lately, though I always feel a little guilty admitting that. I’m just the sister-in-law, after all. It’s not my grief. It’s not my cross to bear. It’s not my problem.

Or is it?

I know there were plenty of people who grieved with Mary when Jesus died on the Cross. They surrounded her, held her, and while she probably comforted them as much as they tried to comfort her, it was a shared experience.

As I consider this birthday, the one we won’t celebrate so much as commemorate, I can’t help but look heavenward.

I don’t want to know why. It doesn’t matter. (Well, maybe it does, but I have a feeling I wouldn’t understand anyway.)

But I’d like to be able to offer more than just a shoulder to the people who will most need it today. Today’s going to be hard for Susie and the girls. It will be a day when you’re more gone than usual, when your absence is glaring.

Allen, pray for and comfort them. Send an angel or two their way today, would you?

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We were at a parade, a time of fun and laughter when it hit me.  He’s gone. And she is not.

I watched her hide it, smile, stay brave.  I saw her sneak behind a port-a-pot to have a moment at what would have been the best time, if he had been there.  And the cross was there, right in front of me.

What did they say to Mother Mary while they stood beside her at the foot of the cross? Maybe they didn’t need to say anything at all.  Maybe being there said it all.  Maybe, in the midst of the flood of tears, they asked, as I have, how much more she could take.

What did she do to deserve this valley of tears?  Why her?

The cycle of Why won’t help, I know. But, in the face of the empty place at the table, the cautious smiles from the girls, the amount of what needs done, it slips out…Why?

I gripped my rosary at the parade and as I watched her smile at his brother.  I rubbed her back and thought of what I would give to take her place.  No, I don’t really want to take her place, but I want to take her pain, carry it for a time, relieve her of the burden of it.

What did they say to Mother Mary as she held her Son’s body? How could they meet her eyes, red-rimmed and yet calm?  What else mattered at that moment?

We have the advantage of knowing the rest of the story.  It was only three days later when the unbelievable happened, when their sorrow turned to joy.

Where is the rest of our story?  It’s ahead, past the signpost of pain.  We’ll get there.  We might be carried, but we’ll get there.

Mary, be a mother to us now. Stand beside us as we bear the cross of grief.  Carry us as we stumble along, trying to keep our gazes on Him.

I picture her at the side of the road, dust matting her hair, tears mixing with the noise around her.  She had noise all around her: yelling and jeering, wailing and sobbing, grunting and groaning.

There was nothing sterile about the experience of watching her Son — innocent, bloodied, abused — dragging himself and his cross through the filthy streets.  It was raw pain, horrible grief, unbearable watching.

What did she pray?  In her shoes now, I grip a rosary; she didn’t have a rosary.  Did she use the words of a Psalm?

This picture of Mary has been with me since January 3, when my brother-in-law unexpectedly died.  It has been the image of Mary that I look to when I picture my sister-in-law, widowed at age 34 with two daughters.  It is this shoulder that I lean on when I think of how I might comfort her.

I used to wonder how, exactly, Mary could understand our grief and terror and pain.  Maybe it’s because I’ve never seen a statue of her dirtied and disheveled, as she must have been during the Passion.  We don’t glorify the ugliness of life by making statues of the experience, but I need something other than the sterility of the statues in church.

I need to know Mary understands. It’s hard to open myself up to someone who seems distant, judgmental, perfect.

Seeing her at the side of the road, though, perhaps while I meditate on the sorrowful mysteries, changes our relationship.  She goes from a flawless statue above me at Mass to a woman who has felt my pain.  As she holds me, I realize that, while I’m not as much like her as I’d like, we have more in common than I thought.

In the coming weeks, I’ll see grief up close as I prepare to visit my sister-in-law and her girls.  I’ll feel my brother-in-law’s absence and I’ll struggle with words.  I’ll squeeze the rosary in my pocket and pray for the wisdom to know when to keep my words to myself, when to reach out and hug, when to let the Spirit speak through me.  I’ll try to do, because there is comfort in doing, but I will also try not to forget that the gift is also being: being there in person, with hugs and ears and shoulder.

This grief is indisputable, huge, raw.  It’s larger than I am, bigger than my ability to handle, huge in a way I’ve never felt before.

And it’s not even, really, my grief.  Is it harder to watch someone you love suffer than it is to suffer yourself?  Is it more wrenching to think of their tribulation than it is to forge through it on your own?

Mary knows. That’s my comfort.  She’s a mother to us now in ways we’ve never asked her to be before.

In her knowing, she nods and holds me close, snuggling me close to her Son.  She’s lived pain before, and she shares it with us now, offering us her prayers.

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The feast of Our Lady of Lourdes is this week, on February 11.  My latest at Faith & Family Live examines the “big splash” Mary made at Lourdes in light of my ordinary life. There are links at the end to help you discover more about the history and devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes.  If you’re motivated, you can even plan something for Thursday. 

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It was just another Sunday, the last day of our Christmas break.  We were going to do this or that, watch football, clean up the house, bask and prepare for back-to-normal.

But January 3rd would never be “just another Sunday” to us ever again.  Normal will forever be different.

Through the day, from holding my mother-in-law, to swallowing my tears and sneaking them out over tea and in the bathroom and under my arm, to holding my mother-in-law some more, to pulling out all my Type A stops and hiding behind lists and planning, one prayer kept running through my mind.

“Mary, be a mother to us now.”

My sister-in-law is, hands-down, one of the strongest, most courageous, most inspirational people I know.  My mother-in-law is neck-in-neck with her.

Hearing the news that my brother-in-law collapsed yesterday had me on the edge of the car seat.  The call less than ten minutes later, that he had been declared dead, was devastating.

And I’m just the sister-in-law in Ohio.

We gathered at my mother-in-law’s house.  It seemed like the natural thing to do.  In the face of tragedy and loss, we go to the flame, to the source of the love, to the one who needs us and who we need.

Just as the wise men traveled on that Epiphany many years ago, following a star in the sky, we went to my mother-in-law.

“Mary, be a mother to us now.”

Her first words crushed me.  They continue to crush me.  They strike my heart and tear me apart.

“Aren’t mothers supposed to make everything better?” she sobbed.  “I can’t help her.  I prayed to St. Joseph.  And…”

“Mary, be a mother to us now.”

I can tell you that Mary is here with us, sobbing and grieving.  She knows what it’s like. But as I tell you, knowing it as a fact, I have to also admit that I don’t feel it.  I don’t see her.  I can’t hear her.

What I hear is the buzzing in my head.  What I see is the mist in my eyes.  What I feel is the weight of loss — mostly my sister-in-law’s loss and my two nieces’ loss.

This isn’t a public spectacle, and it is an intimate time in our family.  I share this, because as I live the suffering, as I chronicle it in my mind, I can’t help but think of the last time.  It’s been years, and time is a great healer.

But some wounds remain.  Some tears don’t dry.  Sometimes there isn’t enough time, ever.

Mary knows about that, doesn’t she?  Isn’t that one of the reasons she’s Our Lady of Tears?

“Mary, be a mother to us now.”

This week I’ll be reflecting a lot more than usual on Mary — on her sorrows and her strength, on her pain and her wisdom, on how God turned her suffering into joy.

It’s hard to see joy when you’re looking at devastation.  It’s more than a challenge to think past the pain, to embrace God’s will and keep hope alive.

I don’t know how we’ll do it.

“Mary, be a mother to us now.”

Thank you for your prayers, your support, and your kind words.  Keep ‘em comin’.  We’re going to need them.

“Mary, be a mother to us now.”