Called to Motherhood

I was reading a magazine article a few months ago, about someone who keeps images of Christ around them to remind them of how they should live. The idea being that the more you look at Christ the easier it is to become Christlike. I have to confess that this is the main reason I wear a crucifix, it makes me stop and think at that those vulnerable times about how I should behave. It does not always work, which is the most shameful part. Sometimes I am wholly and totally selfish.

Then finding myself returning to the presence of Christ it is hard to look him in the eye, so to speak. I know his forgiveness is without reservation, but somehow my repeated transgressions do not seem worthy of such complete love. The revelation of such a divine love was the catalyst behind my journey of Faith. 

It was an understanding that revealed itself the first time I held a child of my own. When I looked at this vulnerable miracle, I knew I would defend his life with mine, no matter what his transgressions.  It is a totally overwhelming love, it consumed my very being. I have now experienced this three times. With each and every child it is just as powerful, yet the capacity to love the others is in no way diminished. If you had asked me twelve years ago if I had the ability to love to that capacity I would have said "NO". Yet here I am. Sometimes the love is pushed to its' very limits but I do not think love is meant to be easy. Love and joy are words so closely associated with the Christ. They are words that go hand in hand with hate and sorrow, which are words that are also associated with Christ. The call to love one another is a painful sacrificial call but also one which brings so much love and joy into our own lives and those with whom we share it.
These common themes are also the theme of Motherhood. Motherhood can in and of itself be a calling and vocation. It is not the one I would have said would have been mine whilst I was growing up. However God had other plans and thrust in my path a love from which I could not hide. Here I come back to the Virgin Mary (I told you, I would). In the quiet of night, an angel came and changed the direction of a young girls life. She encountered a divine love and a human love all wrapped up into one tiny bundle which she had to nurture and ultimately sacrifice. She is a braver woman than I, I do not think I could have had the faith in God to stand at the foot of the cross as my child was mocked, beaten and humiliated. She had such a pure trust in God and Jesus. It is truly something to which we should all aspire.
The honor of sharing her body with the truly divine is one we will never share. However each and every child carried and born is a miracle of God. Therefore it is a God given vocation, however that plays out in others lives, in mine it is one of the ways in which God has called me to serve.