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Selfless Devotion
Dear
Girlfriends,
A few weeks
ago my sleep-deprived daughter, sporting spit-up on her blouse, looked me
straight in the eye and said, "No one told me it was going to be this hard." I
just looked at her and blinked. The "no one" she was referring to was me. Uh-oh.
After she
left I basked in my self-pride of making motherhood and selfless devotion look
so easy. But then I became confused. Wait
. . .how could she not know this is sometimes very hard? Had she not seen
selfless devotion for these past 30 years?
Well, of
course she had - but like most of us, she didn't know what she was looking at.
Our
recognition of selfless devotion is like our relationship with the sun: it
comes up every morning without our doing a single thing. We take it for
granted, enjoying its light and relishing its warmth. But even though it's a
constant in our life, we rarely really "see" it. Only the occasional
spectacular sunrise or sunset gets our attention. And we certainly don't
appreciate what's going on in the background. Few of us understand the way our
solar system hangs together. No, we give little thought to what it takes for Mr.
Sunshine to smile on us every day. It's the same with selfless devotion.
My friend
BJ didn't know what it looked like, either; not because she took it for
granted, but because she had never laid eyes on it. Ever.
When she
was a baby, BJ's biological mom gave her to a woman who worked in a bar, who -
when BJ was only 15 years old - left BJ alone to raise herself. At the age of
46, prior to a major surgery, BJ began looking for someone to hire to take care
of her as she recuperated at home. But a precious friend, who had invited BJ
into her family, volunteered her mom, Genny, for the job, insisting that this
was the solution to BJ's convalescence needs. Little did BJ know that this
would be a close encounter of the selfless kind.
One night,
after BJ got up to go to the restroom, she returned to her bed - but the bed
was not as she had left it. BJ held her breath; she was in awe. While BJ was
up, Genny had quietly crept into her room to straighten her sheets and blankets
. . . and Genny had fluffed her pillow.
In all her life, BJ had never had anyone fluff her pillows. As BJ told me the
story, I could just see this precious little woman padding across the floor to
deliver selfless devotion under the cover of night. But unlike the rest of us
who have had our pillows fluffed, BJ knew what she was looking at. It was like looking
at the sun for the very first time.
I know that
many of you, my girlfriends, are young mothers who are just learning the ropes -
and I'm sure there are days when you're overwhelmed (as we all were). As you
sacrifice your physical, material, and emotional needs for those of your child,
I hope you will take time to think about and thank your own mom. As imperfect
as she might have been, she also sacrificed for you - even if you didn't notice
all that was going on in her solar system, behind her eyes . . . and in her
heart. There were sacrifices I'm sure she made, even if you didn't know what
you were seeing. And so it will be for your child.
Shauna will
make mothering look easy; so much so, that Ava probably won't know it's
selfless devotion that she's looking at, either. And one day, thirty years from
now, Shauna can think of her own good answer when Ava says, "No one told me it was going to be this
hard."
Fluffing
pillows for the next generation,
Ellen,
a.k.a. Sugar
Posted by Ellen on June 11, 2008 9:23 AM
| Category: What Does It Look Like?
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