| Sunny Side Up May 8, 2002 � 2002, Kathleen Gibson Don�t Give up on the Prodigals My earliest memories of my mother are all in the garden. She�s bent over�always bent over. Dropping tiny seeds into the black earth. Pulling those pesky dandelions. Staking tomatoes, hilling potatoes. A flowered dress billows in the wind about her legs and there�s a sun patch on her back. I think she�s beautiful even with that dirt smudge on her chin. She thought she was growing a vegetable patch. She was�one of the best on the block. But she was tending a more important garden at the same time. Planting seeds with every word she spoke. Pulling weeds with each correcting discipline. Watering carefully with love and tenderness. I was that garden. She and my father paid vigilant attention to the soil of my life�to every budding desire, each sucker that would have drained life from my growing, greening edges; every small important stalk that needed staking before the contrary winds of life thrust it down. Even when I was grown, she tended from a distance. Her support and encouragement fertilized new growth, reminded me of my strong roots, and helped me visualize what I could become. To this day, she waters me frequently with prayer. In my late teens I left home and rebelled against my mother�s careful tending. It was a quietly dark rebellion of the mind and spirit that wormed its insidious way into my behavior. Undercover, covert. My mother, unaware, never stopped praying and eventually I came down where I ought to be. Some prodigals do. Some take longer than others, and sadly, some never do. There are tangled webs of thought in the soul of a prodigal�s parent. Questions and regrets. Sorrow and guilt. Unreasonable hope and dire predictions. The never-quite-forgotten scent of baby oil, and the sweet recall of days when night-time interruptions meant only a feeding and a diaper change. A soft lullaby, perhaps. It�s tough, tending to the soil of a prodigal�s life. And sometimes mothers, tired from the constant weeding and heat of rejection, need mothering themselves, in the middle of it. After all, even the strength of faith benefits from the warmth of a flesh-and-blood hug. Mothers of prodigals, you who feel so flawed and forsaken this Mother�s Day�know this: the Divine Gardener of the soil of our lives is the perfect parent, and he has rebellious kids too. Because he gave us each a gift�.a terrible gift�free will. Terrible because it means we have the freedom to choose wrong. But like my mother, forever watering me with her prayers, God is bent over�always bent over the gardens of his children�s lives, dropping seeds of eternal watchcare in their souls, and tuning his ears to hear their faintest cry. Home, I�m going home. And when that happens, God, the great economist, the gardener of our souls, will see to it that nothing is wasted. Not even the weeds. Certainly not the tears. And never, ever, the prayers. You can respond to this column at [email protected] |
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