‘I, Paul, am already being poured out like a libation, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith.’ (2 Tim 4:6-7)

As I settle into the summer routine of high school, college, and young adult children with summer jobs, new full-time jobs, and job searches, grandchildren and grandbabies coming over to play with their aunties and uncles, and full blown adult children facing their own new challenges desiring time touching base with the rest of the family, I reflect on the very different life I’m living as a mother today versus those early years!

Practically speaking, I am not really in charge of anyone’s schedule now.  Rather, I am a facilitator meeting the demands of bosses and work schedules, all while providing good social situations in which the youngest kids can finish up their years at home. My husband and I remain available to make the home a loving and pleasant place for sibling relationships to grow into maturity, as well as a safe place to come when facing the challenges of their young adult lives. 

The beginning of motherhood is such a literal pouring out of self for the sake of the other, in both material and spiritual ways—shifting over the years. In the beginning, as that new life nestles into your womb, the material gift of self to another becomes a demand new and unique to that child. As you pour the energies of your body into the body of your child, the physical demands can be life-altering, to say the least.  Morning sickness, exhaustion, emotional responses to hormonal changes, and so on, are often disruptive. But the disruption is a blessing; physically and psychologically you are made aware of the reality that something—someone—new and unique now exists.  Your relationship with your child can begin.  We can allow that knowledge and awareness of our new baby to move us to act with care for that child in his or her physical development and also intentionally begin the care of their spiritual well-being by praying and offering the suffering that we are enduring for their own spiritual health and eternal salvation. We also begin the preparation of our own selves for the very physical pouring out of self that will take place at birth and through the early days and years of babyhood and toddlerhood. 

This pouring out does not end as young ones begin to gain independence in a myriad of ways. In a sense, our physical and spiritual efforts move with the child out of the womb and into the home. We go about the work of making our homes an extension of the womb—a welcoming, hospitable, nourishing, and life-giving space for children to grow into their maturity. The efforts to make a place where they learn to develop in their own personal relationships with family and with their Savior are essential to the vocation we have been given as mothers. As we aid our children in growing in their own agency and free will, we often find that our pouring out of self begins to have a more spiritual and less material aspect—rosaries, Masses, novenas, quick and effective ejaculatory prayers for God’s mercy on our children, for the intervention and presence of the Holy Spirit in our conversations with them, along with very deliberate and intentional sacrifices on our part. We continue the material work of formation in conversation, instruction, decisions about activities and education that support our work in the formation of their total selves.  Potentially, as we work toward their maturity, we may extend our motherhood beyond the confines of our own families by welcoming our children’s friends into our homes or by bringing our motherhood, in service to our own children, to lives outside of our homes.

Then, as freedom and maturity are achieved and they launch into the world as independent adults, we hope they understand and feel that the home they grew up in remains receptive to them in their own vocations.  We maintain, and even increase, the spiritual pouring out of ourselves in prayer and offerings for them and for their own new families. 

Since we now find that our children’s needs are very much less material than spiritual and that our prayers and Mass attendance no longer include anyone who requires being taught how to comport oneself to communicate with their God and Savior, our bearing of fruit in their lives consists in kneeling in prayer and offering up our suffering for them that we may all be together in the end, having, as St. Paul says, ‘completed the race and kept the faith.’