May is always the craziest month of the year for mothers. Somehow, it’s busier than Christmas, and crazier than the beginning of a new school year. This month is marked with endless soccer and baseball games, awards ceremonies, end-of-year parties, and lots of “lasts.” For me, this year marks another one of my children finishing high school, and with that comes a fresh look at the world we are sending him into. I look at the second reading today and pray that my son sees himself as a living stone, offered to a good God, resting in the promise that he is chosen and precious and will not be put to shame.

Do not let your hearts be troubled. I read those words this morning and my heart emits a heavy sigh. It’s often as if I am holding my breath, taking in all the chaos of the world around me, longing for the reality of heaven, clinging to the promise that God will be victorious, that he will win in the end.

We are part of this great work, dear mothers. The Lord gives our children to us; he allows us to be his hands and heart as he loves and shapes them for his great work, and he allows us to send them out. We are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own. That is the great gift of our lives and the great gift we give our children—the reality that we are called out of darkness into his wonderful light. This is what we gird them with as we send them out each day, and especially as our hearts break a little sending them out into the world. 

Do not let your hearts be troubled. It’s so easy to look at the world and wonder what God is doing, where he is, why he isn’t striking down the evil all around us. But we are called out of that darkness into his wonderful light. You are that light to the world. Your children are the light to the world. And what God is doing in our domestic churches is illuminating the darkness. We are reminded today that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life—not material success, not political peace, not a life without suffering. Just Jesus.

But we are also reminded that he has prepared a place for us. I think of the home we have created for our children and the reality that it will always be a refuge for my children to come back to. Every Sunday, my oldest daughter and her family come and just rest here, and it always brings me such joy that this is still a refuge for her. We have prepared a place for our children that shields them from the harsh winds of the world, and when the time comes, they can come back to us even as they have children of their own. That refuge is just a taste of the place the Lord has prepared for us—a place with no suffering and no more tears, a place we will rejoice forever in his eternal victory. Do not let your hearts be troubled. We find our hope and rest in him, especially in the crazy month of May.