Happy Mother's Day! Perfected Parenthood....

More thoughts and memories of mom today. I tried to avoid Mother's Day this year since my mom passed so recently, but it was unavoidable. Messages were everywhere. Mother's Day wishes have been coming from all directions and sources. Mother's Day is a big deal! We all have mothers of one sort or another. And in some way or variety of ways, we have been like a mother at one time or another to someone, if only in a small way for a little while. Even men act in mothering ways at times.

What do we think of as mothering? Nurturing, comforting, hugging, warming, kissing, cooing, emotional support, feeding, teaching, discipline, direction, guidance, nursing, healing, bandaging wounds. Some mothers have other characteristics: abandoning, rejecting, scolding, criticizing, judging, denying, bullying. Some traits are subtle. A few award winning. Others overwhelming, smothering, suffocating, destructive or murderous.

All of us are mothers in one way or another at one time or other. None are perfect. Except one! My God is a good mother, the most perfect of all! My God provides all my needs at all levels, in the most perfect ways, usually in surprising ways if I let God be God and surrender to the "parenting". God always knows more than I do, before I could ever discover even a part. God knows exactly the best way to give me what I need, direct and guide me where and when and what to do for my best and the best good of others. God can teach me what I need to know when I need it. God also disciplines and corrects, but in merciful and gentle ways if I respond with a desire to listen and do the best I can.

God can heal any wound and love unconditionally in abundant, lavish ways. And if I ask for the wisdom and ways to be, as best I can, a "mother" to others, God can do that too! I will never be perfect, but God is perfecting the motherhood in all of us that surrender to the parenting of God!