Doing Motherhood

Yet today, tomorrow and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! Luke 13:33-34

The mom's group at my church leads a early childhood class for mothers who attend the alternative high school in our area. This morning a small group of women from our group gathered at church to organize and put together gift bags and resource binders we'll give the students in a few weeks.

I arrived too late to help with one group and just on time to work with the second group. Being a true Minnesota Lutheran, even though I was running late, I also felt a need to bring coffee and baked goods. (It is as if I was raised to believe that sweets and coffee are the third sacrament.) So there we were, united in our effort to support these younger moms.

We joked about who had showered (not I said the fly) and most of us sucked down coffee with the passion; or was it desperation?; of any good addict. Our kids played, cried, laughed, bossed each other around, screamed, ate, and walked/ran around the building with the familiarity of children who identify as much with the church as with their home.

Seemingly we don't have much in common with these young students. For the most part we differ in age, race, economics, upbringing, education, and marital status. By the grace of God our lives look much different than theirs.

But we are all mothers. Whether we wanted to be or not, whether it fit our schedule or turned out how we thought it would, we are mothers. No matter what else we need to figure out in life, we share a call to raise up our children; part of our lives are now lived beyond ourselves.

I love the image of Jesus as a mother hen. He likened himself not to the rooster but to the nurturing hen. The one whose chief purpose is to watch out for her chicks. The one who protects her own by fluffing herself up and stretching out her wings--clucking at her kids to get under her and then sitting on them for their own good. Then she puts her own body between her chicks and the fox. Denying herself so that they might have a fighting chance at a whole life. Dying for them if she must.

Barbara Brown Taylor writes, "...perhaps this is why we call the church, "Mother Church." It is where we come to be fed and sheltered, but it is also where we come to stand firm with those who need the same things from us. It is where we grow from chicks into chickens, by giving what we have received, by teaching what we have learned, and by loving the way we ourselves have been loved--by a mother hen who would give his life to gather us under his wings."

And so at least for me, I gathered my two chicks (by gather, I mean threw them in the car-one without shoes, the other hungry and in her pajamas. I went back for the shoes and she got food.) got sustenance and plopped them in the nursery because, for the sake of my chicks, I want my outstretched arms to extend beyond my own brood.

The students who will receive the binders and goody bags will never know what was going on in our lives as we put them together. They may look at them and never put them to use. They may be too overwhelmed to even open them. But it is our way of extending grace...we are mothers and stretching out our arms is what we do.

I give great thanks for a group of women who model this grace; the ones on this journey of motherhood with me. The ones who continually remind me of the One who opened his arms for me, and through their lives encourage me to open my own arms wider.