A Mothering of the Spirit

My daughter’s hands slipped into hers. Our guest made her way towards her sandals at the door. Her fellow Sisters did likewise. My daughter held onto that special moment with the sticky grip of a child who has also spent the evening handling her ice cream cone. This cheery group of women passed through the doorway onto the front porch, enjoying the lingering Midwest goodbye. The six-year-old, still sure that she would go home with our friends, trotted out to their passenger van. Last photo taken, last hugs pressed heart to heart, last goodbye waves as their van eased out onto the busy intersection and was gone.

“Why can’t they stay forever?” she asked after bath time, after the chaos of all five kids being bathed and de-ice creamed had settled into bedtime stories and dimmed lights. “I want them to come tomorrow,” piped in our nine-year-old son, “just so we can have ice cream two days in a row.”

These beloved women weren’t long-time friends, extended family, or even moms our kids knew from school. They were brand-new friends we met by chance after daily Mass and invited spur-of-the-moment to share dinner with us, Sisters who don’t even live in our city. Yet they felt like forever friends because they were religious sisters. And religious sisters fit differently into the heart. 

I’m a wife and mom to five kids, a lay woman, a cradle Catholic, the kind who shops at bulk food stores and wears sensible flat shoes in her middle years. I’m active with moms’ groups at our parochial school, surrounded by close friends and family members also raising children, living down the block from my own beloved mother. I have no lack of moms in my day-to-day.

And yet, my understanding of motherhood has taken new root and blossomed since religious and consecrated women stepped into my life over the past five years. I am a different mother. They mother me through the prayer poured into our friendship, my heart’s opening to being the Beloved of Jesus, and the encouragement to present my fiat to the Father alongside their own.  

For our children, the presence of women religious has done more than open their eyes to this sometimes hidden call to become a Bride of Christ. Yes, it has prompted many of those conversations about a vocation to religious life. But a generalized notion of vocation feels distant and a bit vague compared with hearing that God called this particular woman to Him. They begin to believe that He has a particular call for their lives, too.

And our God is a God of particulars, isn’t He? He is a God of specifics. He is incarnate and delights in His creation, in our every quirk and heartbeat.

In this instance and through this encounter, our youngest daughter knew that she liked these three Sisters after dining with them in our dining room. Our room filled with icons, beeswax candles flickering because of the toddler’s breath, food passed on plates, some room temp and some too salty. She knew she wanted her sticky hand in Sister Therese Marie’s after hearing her stories about college soccer that led to a knee injury that led to campus ministry that led to Our Lord asking her to be His Own. She felt the love of God pouring out of this vibrant young Sister and she wanted to draw near, hang on with her ice-creamed hand.

And my little lesson from an evening of Sisters’ laughter, chanted Evening Prayer together in our upstairs prayer room, and that lingering goodbye was once again that to mother well, to love with our feminine hearts well, is to tend to the particular person in front of you. To listen and respond personally, to share and consider what would give delight, and to be wholly and truly present, mind and heart. A mothering that extends beyond childrearing. A mothering of the spirit.

My husband and I marvel at the gift of religious sisters in our lives. We want every family to feel the encouragement of their presence for children and parents alike. The Church needs these Brides of Christ in order to see in each woman a particular reflection of the Bridegroom’s love. And then to trust that He holds the same personal passion for each of us.