Soul Food

Michele Marr

o7 “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and

supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God;

and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard your

hearts and minds through Jesus Christ.”

f7 -- Philippians 4:6

Lately I find myself waking up at odd hours of the night wondering if

Susan Levy is sleeping. I imagine her lying awake remembering when she

went into labor or came home from the hospital with her sweet baby girl,

Chandra Ann. I wonder if she remembers what she dreamed for her while she

held her close and rocked or nursed her.

Surely it wasn’t the nightmare she is now living, her young,

energetic, newly-degreed daughter, her daughter with a long and promising

lifetime ahead of her, gone missing. Missing nearly 12 weeks now. Where

can her hope be?

I hope it is with something more stalwart than the Washington, D.C.,

police, the FBI or Gary Condit. I wonder if Susan Levy is close to God,

if she remembers to ask him for help. Or is she too angry with him?

I don’t usually lie awake with angst for other people’s sorrow,

especially when there is little or nothing I can do to make things any

better. But Susan Levy’s heartbreak has stirred something up in me.

I think of myself at 24, so very trusting and naive, eager to know the

world and to find my very own place in it. How often I put myself in

harm’s way, not knowing and not wanting to know. It’s a marvel that I am

not missing or dead.

I think of my mother, how she must have worried through many long

nights. I remember her always wanting me to come home, to stay close. I

thank God she never had to know this grief of Susan Levy. I never

vanished. I always, finally, came home.

How hard it must be to lose what you gave birth to.

Motherhood is a mysterious thing. I’ve only known it secondhand.

I hear it in my sister’s voice, across the phone line from Saline,

Mich. She says, “This will probably be the last vacation when Kellen will

be with us.” There is aching in her voice.

Kellen, my sister’s sweet baby girl, is 17. She will start her first

year at the university this fall. I can hear her mother missing her and I

a say a silent prayer as we talk that Kellen will stay safe and will

always come home.

My friend Lisa’s oldest son Drew is 14. He plays football and has

taken up wrestling. Lisa went to his first wrestling match last week.

“You know,” she wrote in an e-mail to me the next day, “I’ve spent the

last 14 years protecting Drew, watching out for his safety. To see a guy

grab him and push him down, to watch Drew’s legs scramble and flutter,

trying to grab some friction -- his face wincing the emotions were so

strong.”

How hard it is to take care of those we love so dearly. How impossible

it is to do wholly and perfectly.

My prayers for the mothers in my life right now, and for their

children and their grandchildren, are many. My favorite, title, “For

Those We Love” is written in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer.

“Almighty God, we entrust all who are dear to us to thy never-failing

care and love, for this life and the life to come; knowing that thou art

doing for them better things than we can desire or pray for; through

Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Amen.