Motherhood-A Masterpiece That Never Quits…

ERA I: Rooted in Hard Earth - Between the Cradle and the Grave: “a lament and a litany“ (letter 3)

Dear friends

Today, I lean into the ache and awe of a mother’s in-between: where love and loss are folded into every cradle song and sleepless night.

Join me as I honour Mary Martha’s hidden strength;

Mary Martha, they don’t write stories for women like you whose bodies are both altar and ache, whose arms carried more than they could ever lay down.

Seven births.

Five living children.

Two stillborn sons.

And still, you rose with the sun.

What was it like to carry a child in your belly, feel his little foot press against your ribs, and never hear him cry?

To prepare swaddling cloths with aching hands, only to return them to the linen chest untouched?

Between the cradle and the grave there is a silence few understand but I think you knew it well.

The kind of silence where lullabies become laments, and faith is not a banner but a breath just steady enough to keep going.

Did you sing to them anyway?

Did you whisper their names at night?

Did you light a candle when no one was looking and say, “Lord, receive him,” because no one else would?

They called it stillbirth.

They wrote it in church records, with cold ink and quick hands.

But you called them sons.

And you loved them.

And somehow, you loved again.

You opened your arms again.

You birthed again.

You mothered again.

I write this for you, but I also write it for every mother who held more grief than anyone saw who walked into the next room, the next season, the next life with a limp no one could name.

Mary Martha, you have taught me that love does not vanish in death, it deepens.

That even in sorrow, a mother’s hands remember how to bless ~ thank you!

___________

🕯️ A Reflection for you the reader

Scripture for Contemplation:

“You keep track of all my sorrows.

You have collected all my tears in your bottle.

You have recorded each one in your book.”

—Psalm 56:8

Reflection Prompt:

What unspoken grief do you carry or have you witnessed in another?

How might you honour that life ~ however brief ~ with gentleness today?

Till tomorrow let us pause and be reminded that nothing offered in love is ever lost.

Lisa Raie xox