Cries from a Mom

It’s a gray, foggy, overcast morning as I sit in tears reading news accounts of Monday’s devastating tornado that hit Oklahoma.

My children are still comfortably asleep while there is a mom who will never wake her children again on a foggy, overcast morning.

On Monday night I sat at the baseball field with tears in my eyes as I watched my son, who has worked so hard to overcome a batting slump, strike out yet again. My eyes filled with tears as I watched him slowly, with shoulders slumped over & head hung low, drag the bat behind him towards the dugout. I begged God to help him hit the ball, to give him the encouragement he needed, and then when he didn’t hit the ball… I admit, with shame, I was frustrated at God for not answering my prayer.

Oh how bad I feel for being so frustrated! As I sat in my blue camp chair upset because my third grade son was sad because he had struck out again, there was a mom of a third grade boy who was walking around in the rubble of an elementary school crying out to God to save her boy.

A mom who cried out in desperation longing to hear and see her child once again…

A mom who thought when she dropped her son off at school in the morning she would see him again that afternoon…

A mom who desperately wants the opportunity to sit in a blue camp chair beside a baseball field hoping her son will break his batting slump…

As a mom there will be many times I will cry tears of joy and tears of sadness for my son.

But, today, as a mom I cry tears of grief & sorrow for the mom who won’t have the opportunity to wake her son from a night of sleep, or pick her son up from school, or sit in a blue camp chair and watch her son play baseball.

I don’t know why and I struggle to understand why tragedy like this happen. But today I cry and pray, that somewhere in the unbearable pain this mom is feeling, that she will feel God’s strong, loving, caring arms wrap tight around her. I pray that she will know Psalm 46:10 “Be still, and Know that I am God” and in the midst of the questions & whys that “the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard (her) heart and mind in Christ Jesus” Philippians 4:7.