Mother, Can You See Me?

My mother told me she always wanted children, but at first, it just didn’t happen.  She said she felt sad, but whatever the reasons, she also felt God knew best.  

Then ten years after she and my father married, my brother was born.  Eleven years later, I was born!  Twelve years later, my brother’s first child was born.  In the next six years, two more grandchildren followed.    And then twenty years after the first grandchild, another grandchild was born.  My mother said God gave her a Gift in allowing her active mothering and close grandmothering to last for so many years.

Take delight in The Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.  Psalm 37:4

I slept in the room with my parents, my single bed next to their bed.  This was fortunate because of two problems I had.

I was very nearsighted and I had an active imagination.  In the nighttime hours, the shadows on the wall easily turned into monsters.  When I reached out and touched my mother in the dark, they would go away.  She would squeeze my hand and I knew all was well.

When my brother went to college, I was “promoted” into my own room.  This was exciting until nighttime came.  When the monsters arrived on the first night, I screamed in terror.  

My mother patiently explained that while the shadows did look strange, they were just shadows.  She demonstrated by turning on the light.  It did seem better.  But as soon as she left the room, the monsters came back.  I begged to go back to her room.  She was firm that I was in my own room now and it would be ok.

But in an act of Mercy, she arranged my bed so she could see it from her bed in the next room.  It didn’t completely solve the problem, since I could not see her.  But when I called out from my bed, “Mother, can you see me?” she always answered, “Yes, Carolyn, I’m right here.  I can see you.”

I was eventually “promoted” to other places far outside her physical vision.  I went to college.  I lived in other places after college.  And then one day Mother was “promoted” to the place God had prepared for her in Heaven.  In the midst of grief,  I found myself calling out silently, “Mother, can you see me?”

And the funny thing was that God allowed her to answer me in my mind, “Yes, Carolyn, I’m right here.  I’m just in the next room.  I can see you.”

I would come to know that it was God Himself speaking.  As recorded in Isaiah 66:13, God said,  “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you …”

And now when things seem scary,  I reach out and say, “Can you see me?”

God, Jesus, The Holy Spirit, My Mother and my Father all answer, “Yes, Carolyn, we’re right here.  We can see you!”