Every so often and sometimes far too often I am reminded of the battles my oldest child and I have trudged through together.  From the very beginning even her time coming into this world has been a battle to overcome.  I seriously could write a battle book for her from the day I found out I was pregnant with her until now nearly sixteen years later.   There will be many more chapters to add to the book that will grow in greater intensity.  Somehow these far too frequent and early battles will have prepared her for what God has planned for her.  Since the day I knew I was carrying her I have felt this overpowering desire to protect her from a world that loves to tear down who it views as weak.

Her shyness and quiet spirit is all I can account to the reason why others have singled her out and  left her out from day one.  Usually it has been people who should be in her corner backing her that I have watched leave her out and mock her.  Most of the time it has been the  most appropriate for me to sit back and immediately treat her wounds with encouragement, positivity, and instruction how to learn from the world’s harsh reality, rather than confronting the source directly.  Oh there have been times I have had to pray, choose my words wisely, make phone calls, send emails, do research, present her case, and stand up for her as well.  There have been medical battles, school battles, sports battles, child bully battles, etc…

Yesterday I was reminded as she was in goal for an intense game of soccer that I still have that mother hen.  As she was making an appropriate choice to keep her post in goal and let her defenders do their job I hear a scream “COME ON KEEP” from behind me.  It was a tone that if I were a child and yelled at in that manner I would have been crushed and cried.  The tone was like fingernails down a chalk board to me.  The tone said “you are terrible and not doing your job” to me as the mother.    No goal was scored and my daughter had chosen wisely.

With  Easter having just been this last weekend my thoughts went to Mary the mother of Jesus.  In all her humanness I can’t imagine what her own “mother hen” felt like watching her son being mocked, tormented, falsely accused, cursed, beaten, and murdered on the cross.    I can’t imagine being in a crowd that is screaming “CRUCIFY”  and having your one small little voice saying, but he has done nothing wrong…he has done nothing to deserve this…he has never done anything wrong…   With those three words I mentioned above screamed harshly at my own child every nerve in my body stood on end.  I can only imagine with each strike, whip, and each hammer of the nails how Mary’s nerves would have been completely frayed.  She was there at his miraculous conception, his birth, and witnessed so many instances in the life of Jesus that clued her in to the fact that He indeed was the Son of God placed in her womb and entrusted care.  Her Son has the ultimate battle book and fulfilled God’s ultimate plan to fight life’s ultimate battle death.  He alone conquered death for all of mankind.  Mary in her humanness as she watched her boy hang from that cross being cursed at and mocked still did not understand the extent of God’s plan, but kept a mental record of it all.   “She pondered it all in her heart.”

There is nothing we can face or give in this life that is greater than what Jesus did for us.

As a mother I know God loves my children even more than I do and that every challenge faced is to teach them and prepare them for the next.  As a parent God continues to increase my wisdom on how to build up, encourage, and go to bat for my children out of love.  Even with our next journey in life with fostering I feel this mother hen in me desiring  to protect children who are weak and have no one to battle for them.  Sometimes it will be taking a stand for them and sometimes it will be providing the encouragement, love, and instruction to help wounds heal…   I really don’t like the feeling of my mother hen rattling the cage, but God has put this drive and fight within me for a reason…