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Moments for Mom Mother's Day 2010


By Elisabeth Corcoran

There’s something about being a mom and living out the day-to-day with your kids, that you sometimes lose sight of who they are. At least, that’s been my experience. I look at Sara and Jack much more as “my kids” then I do as “Sara, whole person on her own” and “Jack, whole person on his own”.

The other day, my animated seventh grade daughter was telling me some very detailed story about something that happened at school, and she’s gesturing wildly with her hands, and talking about people I don’t know, and I was staring at her and she said, “What are you thinking?” And I said, “You are an entire person all by yourself.” I’m sure she thought I was nuts. She just said, “Duh, Mom…” and kept going with her story. But it happened…somewhere along the way, she stopped being just my child, stopped being just Sara the little girl, and started being Sara the girl who is figuring out life and God and family and friends and (ugh) boys and homework and responsibility all on her own.

And then there’s Jack. This morning, he said a couple things that made me realize that he is passing through that threshold where he isn’t the most important person in the universe. We’ve all been there. In fact, when I was a child, I had this fixation trying to figure out if I ate a green jelly bean instead of a yellow jelly bean, if it would affect the goings-on of President Carter (like were we all that interconnected in the universe?). Okay, so perhaps I was a bit more existential…and narcissistic!...then the average second grader.

Anyway, Jack. He had come upstairs last night to sort of tuck me in as I wasn’t feeling well and I mentioned I had a headache and then we prayed together. So this morning, literally the first words out of his mouth to me at 5:40am, were, “How’s your headache?” What eleven-year-old boy cares if his mother has a headache? Answer: mine. Then as he was walking out the door, he told me he would pray for me during third period (as I had mentioned that I would be starting to lead a new Bible study that day and was a bit nervous). What eleven-year-old boy prays for his mother while at school? Answer: again, mine.

I am waking up to the reality that I don’t just “have” two “kids”. I am living alongside, guiding, supporting, molding, praying for, experiencing, cherishing two extraordinary totally-entire-people in their own right, who just so happen to have my last name and half of my genes, along with some of my quirks and more baggage then I ever intended to pass down.

But their mine and their God’s and He gave them to me to watch and love and nudge along the way…and it’s a gift beyond measure to behold. Happy Mother’s Day.

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© Elisabeth K. Corcoran, 2001-present
Elisabeth Corcoran is the author of In Search of Calm: Renewal for a Mother’s Heart (2005) and Calm in My Chaos: Encouragement for a Mom's Weary Soul (2001). She is wife to Kevin, and mom to Sara, 11-&-1/2, and Jack, 10. Her passion is encouraging women and the Church, and applying her gifts to eradicating global poverty, as well as local and global AIDS, one small step at a time, which she hopes to fulfill through her writing and speaking, and her connection with Open Door Clinic in the Fox Valley area and her church’s partnership in Bo, Sierra Leone. You can learn more about Elisabeth and her ministry at elisabethcorcoran.com.
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