Her Hands

Sometimes I see her hands in mine. Something happens to daughters at a certain age, they slowly become their mother. It happens when you have small children and all the words that come out of your mouth suddenly seem as if you are channeling Mom. It happens when you kids are teenagers and you challenge them and try to make them feel guilty for breaking your heart. Or it can be in a very subtle moment, hands working at the stove and you look down and see the way your Mom might hold a pan’s handle. She disappears as you flip the pancakes or the eggs, but the image is there. Blending one into the other, one life so unique and so much a part of the other, we are formed out of the same cloth, in very different seasons but with so much in common.

As I have spent the last few days in the ER and then in a hospital room with my mother, I have watched her as they cleaned her wounds, did tests, changed IV ports – all of this she takes with great calm. I get a chance to look closely at her hands and her eyes. I have washed her body and rubbed her back. An intimate knowledge of the one most intimately tied to me.

I am reminded that we are this closely connected with God. A visceral, tangible connection, often hidden in our own personal expressions and then suddenly reveal in a subtle moment. A whisper, a sigh, a gesture are revealing the intimacy of God’s connection to us. Those who look for signs may now find spectacular moments, but those who are present with another, know the connection as real and visible. “Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.”(John 14:11) God revealed in relationships of love and connection. Today I pray for the strength to see God’s love in the small gestures and words around me. I ask for the courage to acknowledge and be grateful for the real signs of God’s loving presence. May we all this day, know our connection to God as a living, tangible and real connection – as real as mother to daughter, father to son, and sibling to sibling. May we believe this day that we are in God and God is in us all.