Our Lady, Mother of Sweet Sorrow

 As I was working last week, enjoying the task of coloring with two and three year olds, I came up with this sketch of Our Lady.  I liked Mama Mary’s face from the get go, but had some trouble with the baby Jesus.  Mary’s face looks so very loving, I knew she had to be holding Christ very close.  I finally decided to go with the final sketch on wood depicted on the bottom.
I was, however, meditating on death the entire time I was working on this sketch.  My miscarriage scare made a huge impact on me.  Although I didn't really believe I'd had a miscarriage yet, the words of the nurse, "you are almost certainly having a miscarriage," had a profound emotional impact on me.  I have never cried so hard, or felt that I have lost something so precious as that little one, whom I barely know.

After I made the first sketch, I met up with a mother who had lost her seven year old earlier this year.  The seven year old was one of the kids I watched, and as I was talking to this mother, all the pain I felt about my own loss of child was transferred to this seven year old.  I wept again.
No mother should ever have to lose a child.  But when I was told I was miscarrying, I took some consolation in knowing that my baby still had his Mother.  As I cried in the Church two weeks ago, I knew Mama Mary was holding my baby just as she holds her own Son here.  She holds our babies close and with the utmost love, whether they are alive or have passed on to the kingdom, whether they are still in the womb, or 94 years old.  We have only to give our children to her.  I would have missed holding my little one very dearly, but to know that my baby would have been loved and cared for in the best way possible, in full heavenly happiness and glory - this is good to know.  I look forward to seeing my baby in September, thanks be to God, but had my child died, I know that when I would meet him again it would be in the loving arms of our Mother.