A very special grieving mother

It has become my privilege to become friends with some other grieving mothers. Our roads, while very different in some ways, are very much the same in others. We are all struggling to figure out how to live our lives without our sons. We are all trying to find a place of peace and rest on a journey that allows moments of peace, short times of rest, before we are thrown back to a memory that takes us back to our place of sorrow and grief. Each of the mothers I know, is struggling to maintain a relationship with God, to run to Him, to trust in Him, to be assured that our sons are safe in His presence. It is the journey of a grieving mothers heart. Then,my thoughts went to another grieving mother....Her name was Mary....Her son's name was Jesus. I wondered how her heart did not fail in grief and sorrow as she stood below the cross, seeing him suffer and cry out in agony. I wondered if she felt like she had to defend Him, when others blamed Him for being to out spoken, or doing something wrong that resulted in his own death. I wondered if she went home after they laid Him in the tomb, and fell to her knees and sobbed....can this be my life, can my son really be gone, how can I ever keep going? I wondered, even after He rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven, if she missed talking to Him, hugging Him, looking into His eyes....knowing He would be there when she needed Him? Was it different for her because her son was the Son of God, or was her pain like ours because she was human and this was her son and her sorrow and loss were very real like ours? One day, I will meet her. I do not expect that the answers to those questions will really matter then...to either of us, but this I do know. She allowed herself to be used by God and, to watch her son die a horrible death. I have a new appreciation for Mary. To be honest with you, other than at Christmas when we all think about the birth of Jesus and identify with her as a birthing mother, I have never given Mary a great deal of thought ....until now. Now I understand that she too, had a grieving mother;s heart. She too, saw her son die, felt the pain and the loss and the grief, and except for a very short time after his resurrection, she too, had to wait to see her son again. So I am comforted, that out of His great love for me, and all the grieving mothers here on earth, and all mankind, God himself, allowed his mother to know the grief that I know, that sorrow that grieving mothers and fathers all over the world know when they lose a child....and He did that because He so loved me and the rest of the world, that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever would believe in Him, would not perish, but have everlasting life. What an amazing love, what an amazing God we serve, how very thankful I am to know Him.