the love of a mother

There are times in life that a message is given to you, that something that may have been written thousands of years ago (or a few days ago on a blog) feels as if it was the opening line of a love letter written to you by someone who knows you deeply.
Just before the first big move of my life (the first of many, as it turned out), a stranger came up to me on my last Sunday at that church and said, sheepishly, that she believed that she had been told that a verse she read when she woke up that morning needed to be told to someone she would meet that day. And when she saw me, she heard that intangible whisper... "it's for her". Poor girl, she obviously had never experienced such a thing before as having to choose between looking crazy and going crazy holding something in...

SO, this was for me that day, and it rings true in my life constantly:

"I tell you the truth," Jesus replied, "no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life..." Mark 10:29-30

This is most present when it comes to being maternally nurtured... as I have given up the "right" to hold on to the bitterness for the lack of mothering I had from the one who holds the title, I have been flooded by care, protection, love and wisdom by the women in my life who mother my heart on a deeply spiritual level.

Many of them have no idea that their words do that for me, like this wish for her children that put to words the lesson I have been on a path to learning recently:

"I hope they learn that when times are good, your circumstances don't have to enslave you or define you. And that when times are bad, your circumstances don't have to enslave you or define you. "

The world is filled with love and hope and all of the nurturing we need to survive, thrive and grow. It's an eternal love that pours over us and truly fills that thirst, but the pitchers are so much a part of the beauty.