RELATABLE MARY: OVERCOMING THE MISERY OF EMPTY NESTING

We birth them, raise them… they fly. Then what? We can learn a lot about empty nesting from Mary of Nazareth who found new meaning after mothering.

DISTANCE

Mary of Nazareth knew heartache as her relationship with her son Yeshua, Jesus, changed radically at the beginning of his ministry, which is bookmarked by his calling her, “Woman” at his first miracle in Cana and again on the cross. Although the Hebrew term, geveret, for “woman, lady, madam” is not rude, it is not imma, mother, either.

Since the death of Joseph, Yeshua’s adoptive father, probably when Yeshua was in his teens, he and Mary had run their Nazareth home together. I imagine them discussing his plans under the courtyard pomegranate tree or on their flat roof of an evening. They were close.

PEDESTALS FOR MOTHERS

Mother-son relationships in the Bible tend to confirm the high status of mothers:

• Bathsheba/Solomon (1 Kings 2:19)
• Nehushta/Jehoiachin (2 Kings 24:8) (Jeremiah 29:2)
• Instructions of King Lemuel’s mother to her son (Proverbs 31)

Almost invariably, the names of kings are recorded with those of their mothers.

Yet between Yeshua and Mary there was now distance.

This must have been painful for her, who so loved her son.

WORRIES

Mary would have worried about the plot of the Herodians and the Pharisees to kill her son, about accusations he had lost his mind and the fact that he could barely find time to eat, because of all the needy crowds around him.

She would have felt rejected when he left her on the outside while calling his followers inside his “mothers”.

When a woman in the crowd praised the womb that bore him and the breasts that nurtured him, he answered that service to the kingdom was more blessed still.

IDENTITY

Mary must have wondered: Who am I, now that my purpose in life is over?

Many of us can relate. We tie up our self-worth in our children. We bear them, raise them, they fledge: Now what, if I am no longer a mother?

We have given much and dedicated ourselves with love, only to realise that we have become obsolete.

THAT WAS BEFORE

I went through this with my eldest, who started by firmly shutting his bedroom door. When I hankered after the deep conversations we used to have, he replied, “That was before.” (Just one of many ouches I might have shared.)

He was right, of course, though it took me years to see it. Yeshua was right, too. Mothering is for a season. Mary was blessed to go on to become a disciple, (Acts 1:14).

Whatever struggle she went through ahead of his wonderful resurrection and ascension, and Pentecost, at which she was surely present, she came to accept that mothering was for a season and God had something else for her now.

TAKEAWAYS

We can take two lessons from Mary’s experience:

1. Our children are not our own. When they grow up, they are in God’s charge and have their own relationship with Him. We need to trust Him— and them— for this.
2. We are not obsolete to God, who has a purpose for every one of us in faith, once the mothering is done.

Mary found meaning as a prayer warrior. I have found it in writing and speaking about God and teaching people He calls to write .

What about you? What is, or might be, God’s exciting new purpose for you?

Please let me know in the comments below how you see yourself or perhaps already are serving the Kingdom in your second life.

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