Exodus 2:3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.
Now if you didn’t know the whole story you would assume Jochebed was a horrible mother and expect her to show up on the Jerry Springer show but you would have assumed wrong. Sometimes what looks like the worst thing you can do for your baby may in fact be the best. Jochebed was actually trying to save her sons life and it worked. Read Exodus 2 so you can get the whole story. Sometimes the hardest thing to do as a mom is walk away from your baby and trust God to save them. Jochebed’s sacrifice allowed Moses to become a messenger for God and one of the greatest leaders of all time. But we only hear about Moses not so much about his mom.
Sometimes you have to walk away from your baby when he’s a teen or a young adult or even a full grown adult. Sometimes we have to stop trying to rescue them so they can learn how to survive on their own. These are not easy tasks.
When Anthony my first born baby was a teenager and involved in drugs I warned him if he brought drugs or dealers around my house I would kick him out. I had three other children at home and could not risk them being in danger because of his bad choices. Unfortunately he didn’t believe me and the day came I had to put my baby in a basket and put him in the Nile. Throw him out on his own in this big bad ugly world. As I was throwing him out my oldest daughter, his partner in crime, was yelling at me from the top of the stairs that she hated me, my youngest son who was five at the time was crying “please don’t throw my brother out” and my baby girl Jessica was just crying because everyone else was. That was a hard day for this mommy. It didn’t help when days later I was driving and Nathanael was in the back seat and we passed Anthony on the road and just drove by and Nathanael was screaming “mommy pick up my brother!” and I had to keep driving.
We celebrate Anthony’s growth today, thank you Jesus, but the hard mommy moments are usually hidden in the background. It may have looked like I was a horrible mother when I was in fact loving him with all I had.
I read an article one time about a woman who had a bunch of kids and the interviewer asked if she loved one child more than another and she said yes. The surprised interviewer asked which one? The mother answered the one who needs it the most at the time. What a great answer.
In my life it took a long time to forgive my mother for not loving me the way I needed her to or thought she should. I can remember countless times being in a store to buy a card for my mother and had to buy a generic one because the official “mother’s” cards were too mooshy and I didn’t feel like they applied to our relationship.
I will never forget the day the Lord spoke to me about it. He said “Gena you are looking for something from your mother she can’t possibly give you and that’s not fair. You can either accept her the way she is and have some sort of relationship or you can love her from a distance.” As many of you know it had to be from a distance for a while.
Now I’m 51 and my mother is in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s far from me. It’s a time I feel she needs me the most but because of circumstances out of my control I can’t be there for her. I have been thinking back over her life and the things she endured that made her who she was and so wish I knew then what I know now and could tell her how much Jesus loves her. I now look at all the things my mother sacrificed for me and the qualities that I like about myself that I got from her. I spoke to her on the phone yesterday; even though she didn’t know who I was I told her I loved her.
Gems we are all just people doing the best we can with what we got. I don’t know if Moses ever told his mother how grateful he was for her risking her life to save his, I hope he did.
So Rose Marie Theresa Rignola Markstaller I want to publicly wish you a Happy Mother’s Day. Thank you for choosing life and giving me life. Gems I want to wish a Happy Mother’s day to the moms who did and are doing a great job and to the ones that are doing what their capable of. To the moms who adopted and the mom who realized it was best to give her baby away. To the mom who is a foster mom or a big sister being a mom. To the dads who are Mr. Mom and the grandparents who are raising their children’s children. To the moms who had to do the unthinkable and say goodbye to their children before they should have and the children who are sending a prayer to their moms. I pray that we will all decide to honor our moms no matter what they did and decide to be better people with what we do.
Proverbs 31:31 Honor her for all that her hands have done, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.
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