Pink and white seersucker trimmed in lace. Raised and tapered at the shoulders. Skimming the ground. Cinched at the waist. Clothed in my mother’s old robe, I putter around the kitchen as I make breakfast before the world stirs. Out-of-date and yet full-of-history, it is the robe my mother wore in the hospital as she spent her first hours holding on to my little life. The feel of the seersucker and lace edges. The sight of the pink and white. Her face glowing in love. My first moments.

Any attempts to remember those moments beyond the photos taken are merely imagination. And yet, I venture to guess the memories exist somewhere within me. Time may have locked them away. But all are not lost. Rather, every caring gesture, nurturing act, and tight embrace are threads within the tapestry knit within me.

A wondrous woven magic in bits of blue and gold.
A tapestry to feel and see, impossible to hold.

She is so much of me that I cannot extract her. She is within me. Amidst the tissue and organs, the flesh and bone, there lives a tapestry within me whose threads tell the story of this life together – the sleepless newborn nights all the way to the present day where we work side by side as ministers in the same congregation.

Beautiful is the tapestry that holds me.

One of my favorite theologians writes that we are our relationships. The bonds of relationship are not just by-products of this human life – they are the very foundation that forms our identity and personhood. To describe myself with my interests would give you pieces of who I am. To describe myself by telling you about my relationships would give you the whole of who I am.

There is much to love about her… her commitment to use her gifts joyfully in service to those around her, her passion about creating space for music to be made and shared, her dedication to her family and the role she plays in it. Grandmother. Wife. Minister. Mother.

And yet, all of these are just pieces of her. They are not the whole of her that inspires the greatest love within me.

It is her being that I love. Her presence that accompanies me. Her voice that comforts me. Her arms that envelop me. Her gentle hands that hold mine.

As Mother’s Day has come and gone for another year, I pause and give thanks.

Beautiful is the tapestry that holds me.