Every parent fails their children in some way. There are no perfect parents. Nor is there a perfect child.
Children disappoint their parents at times too. But it never means that we don't love each other. Mother's Day is a time to recall good memories, not the stressful times. Yet, it was our Holy Father who forewarned there would be trying situation in a mother's life, and it began with the sins of Adam and Eve in the garden.
Eve's pain in natural childbirth might be excruciating, but it wasn't the act of childbirth that proved her worse punishment. Giving birth would be nothing compared to watching her sons, Cain and Able, battle. Eve's most hurtful pain was to be the life-long process of loving her children and how they would continually tug at her heart. No one can pull at a mother's heart strings like her hurting or continually rebellious child.
Eve would carry to her grave the pain of one son being so angry with his brother the killed him. Cain's sin cost Eve two sons, as God banished Cain for his sinful behavior.
And what about Mary, the mother of Jesus? Imagine Mary's pain as she watched her son dying on the cross. Others abandoned Him, but not His mother. Can you even imagine the wound in her heart? It was a wound that would never heal, because love never forgets or lets go or our loved ones.
Yes, childbirth would initiate the most painful of God's punishments for Eve and all mothers since, because a mother never stops being a mother. In this way, a woman is like our Lord, because the Bible says when we ache, Jesus aches. When we are happy, He is too. So it is with a mother and her children. When her child achieves, she feels joy. Still, a mother is only as happy as her unhappiest, troubled child, and it matters not the ages of her children.
My children are all adults and I worry with every illness and disappointment they experience. In your experience, what has been your children's most trying ages?
