Brokenhearted Moms - Advent 3
I can never fully understand the deep connections and conversations in the worldwide society of mothers.
Advent is about Christ coming into the world through human vulnerability.
This image is a cover of a drawing by Sister Grace Remington (got her permission). What I love most about it is the look that Mary and Eve have for each other.
It’s like they were at some cosmic party where they don’t know each other at first, but they find out they are deeply connected on so many levels. They also have a billion mutual friends on Facebook.
Eve is experiencing hope and grace from brokenness that she never thought she’d see an end to. And yet her face could also be of a knowing mom bestowing wisdom and compassion on a new mom... as if saying “...parenting is one of the greatest and hardest adventures of a lifetime. You’ll love them, and want to have them forever... but you may see one of them die before their time, and that’s the absolute worst.”
In my opinion, the little that has been written about Eve has been used against her by male chauvinists. In the flannel board story of her life, she gets two paper cutouts - biting an apple and being cursed as the first mom to go through painful childbirth. That’s it! We don’t talk about how hard it must have been to do something for the first time. No guides. No mentors. No mommy blogs with strategies for maintaining sanity. It’s easy to knock down the forerunners of human living who made mistakes; it’s harder to see through the one-dimensional religious narratives that every mom has the unbelievable task of raising kids the best she can.
Mary takes the hand of Eve and places it on her belly to let her feel the restoring Hope growing in her womb. And yet it’s also of the move of solidarity - accepting the entrance into the great cloud of witnesses of brokenhearted mothers who’ve lost their kids too early.
I can never fully understand the deep connections and conversations in the worldwide society of mothers. But this art opens a small window into what that conversation might be like. That Immanuel means “God with us”... and that this divine Gift comes to us through one of us, into the womb of a blessed and humble teenage woman, and honors the sacrificial and (w)hol(l)y involved life of being a mom.
These meditations are a freely given visual offering for this Advent season.
Thank you for following along.
Most of them originated from my book Honest Advent….
Which is available where all books are sold.
