"Mom" Boxes

There are two "Mom" boxes on my sink-dressing area. One is wooden. One is made of mirrored glass. One  has Mother-praising adjectives on its surface. The other has a verse from Proverbs 31. Both seem to serve the same purpose, to honor me as a mother. This makes me very happy. But the first is a symbol of the hardest time in my life as a mother. The second is a symbol of the truth in Psalm 30:5, "...weeping may remain for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning."

The first and the second box, however, are brackets marking either side of an era. The first was given to me on Mothers' Day by my older daughter. I was surprised to get a gift at all from her that year. At that time, she was in rebellion against us. She had chosen her own path, which included dating a handsome, educated man from Jordan. In the two years that they went out, my husband and I saw him only two times. On one of those occasions, we actually got to talk to him. She kept him, and herself away from us.

During this time, she graduated from college and became a flight attendant. She was based at Laguardia in New York City. She mentioned in a phone call that Sex and the City  was a show that described her life. Since she had free flights, we would hear now, and then, that people had seen her, at the airport or having her hair done. We wouldn't even know she was in town.

In the summer of 2001, I finally surrendered her to God, emotionally exhausted with worrying about her. I asked myself what the worst thing that could happen in this situation was. The reply was that she could die in her lifestyle. Would God still be God? Would He be in control? (Psalm 33:8-11) Yes, He would. I felt that she knew Him, and that she would be with Him, if death were where all this would end.

I imagined the second worst thing that could happen. She could marry this young man, whom we didn't even know. Would God still be God?  Yes. Could He handle this situation? Yes. Nothing is impossible with Him (Luke 1:37).

Then came September 11, 2001. A call came from one of her friends, who lived in Washington, DC, wondering if we had heard from her. When we asked what she meant, she told us to turn on the television. As I stood in my living room watching the plane fly into the second building, I thought of her airport, so close by. I asked, "Is this my answer, Lord? Is my daughter on one of those planes?"

Soon afterward, we finally got in touch with her before all communication stopped. She had NOT been working that day, but she was shaken. In Queens, she could smell the smoke that had already drifted over the Hudson River. Jets were circling overhead. And her Sex-and-the-City lifestyle didn't seem glamorous anymore.

As soon as planes were flying again, she came home. On her second night there, she came into our bedroom late at night. She quietly announced that she and her boyfriend had eloped. They were now married.

With a reduction in flights, the airline had to let some flight attendants go. She was one of those who had been hired within the last couple of years, so she lost her job. She and her new husband got an apartment within five minutes of our house about the time she found out she was pregnant.

The next five years were hard ones. The baby was a girl, who is the delight of my heart. About the same time as my daughter discovered she was pregnant for the second time, she also discovered what she had long suspected. Her husband had another life, dominated by alcohol and the behavior that accompanies addictions.

To keep our daughter and granddaughter safe and since they had not been supported financially by her husband, we let them move back in with us. Our grandson was born when his sister was four, just before the divorce. They moved out when the children were nine and five.

Which brings me to the second "Mom" box. The reason our daughter and her children moved out was that God had allowed another man to come into her life. He, too, had made some bad choices, but God called him to Himself. The young man then made the best choice of his life, the choice to follow Jesus. Together they have grown in the Lord as they have grown close to each other.

This is the person who gave me the second "Mom" box to me. The occasion was the rehearsal dinner for their wedding. To me, it is a symbol of the ending of a long time of suffering for us all. Instead of reminding me of the saddest part of my life as a mother, this one reminds me of a faithful God. In His grace He gave my daughter a second chance. He brought her, and me as a mother, joy in the morning.