Mother of the bride

Today I was helping Elai edit her Soc paper on what is called the Swedish Law, a new strategy for targeting sex traffick and violence toward women. It is now law in Canada and according to Elai’s research, seems to be a good idea. It eliminates prosecution of prostitutes, recognizing them as victims, and goes after the johns. Fighting sex traffic has been Elai’s passion, and it was fun to work with her on this project. I learned a lot, got to slip back into English Teacher mode for a bit, and shared something with my daughter. Who is now married! I am realizing more and more how much my kids have shaped the roles I play in life, and now these are changing.

Those of you who were at the wedding heard me say something like this:

Mother of the bride.

I have had many roles in Elai’s life. I started out as Baby-holder, Baby-feeder, Baby-rocker. She was a happy baby, but she didn’t like change much, so “no thanks” to bath time, and when the sun disappeared and it was time for bed, she’d cry for hours. Robert hung a hammock over our bed and we took turns rocking her there to comfort her. We would be dozing, and pulling, back and forth, back and forth. I was Changer and Comforter. I was even Food itself, capital “F,” and she was a warm bundle of needs.

And very soon I was Audience for a little princess, a little actress. We lived in a one-room home with a curtain between our bed and her playpen-bed, and every morning she would stand up in her pen, grab the curtain and pull it aside with an enormous grin as if to declare, “Ta Da! Here I am.” The world was her stage. If we went to a restaurant, Elai would be making friends with the people at the next table, her royal subjects. And I’ve been her Audience ever since. I was Director and Audience for her plays when she was the passionate Juliet, the outraged Shylock, the flighty Puck, the arrogant Shrew, the brash “My Fair Lady, and the cool, witty Sherlock Holmes. Elai has many facets to her personality, always a mystery, and I will always be her Audience.

I was her Teacher. I taught her to read Calvin and Hobbes, and to do math with plastic squares and multiplication songs (Try this to Jingle Bells: Three, six, nine, twelve, fifteen, eighteen, twenty-one. Twenty-four and twenty-seven, thirty, and we’re done!), and to act out history lessons with wooden swords and garbage can lids.  We read books together and listened to Grampa Patterson on tape, reading all the voices in the Narnia stories. At night I sang Christmas carols to put her to sleep so she’d learn them (Away in a Manger ,to the tune we sang during the wedding). And she visited Mixtec villages, and historic cities, and Zapotec ruins, and learned an extra language and a bunch of extra cultures, and today she knows her multiplication tables and her history, but she also knows how to pack light, and live out of a suitcase and call anywhere home and anyone a friend.

I was Advisor in the hard times, and Police even, sometimes, when it was necessary. And I was Minister, too. I taught her about Jesus. When she was fifteen, she knew she was ready to give her life to Jesus forever, and I baptized her in a kid’s plastic swimming pool in the front patio of the house where we met for church. I remember the water was cold, and the moment was warm.

I was Santa Claus, Tooth Fairy, Boss, Cheering Squad, and Memory. I’ve been many things to Elai. I have had many roles. But today reminds me of my role as tutor, or guardian, to bring her to what she was born for: a relationship with Jesus. God put me, and Robert, and all of us, in Elai’s life for two reasons. So she would have Mother and Father and Brother, and Uncles and Aunts, and Cousins, and Godparents, and Friends and now Husband, to love her forever. (I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always. As long as you're living, my baby you'll be.) But it’s also so she can have just a tiny preview, a taste of the role she has forever in the family of God. All that we do now is rehearsal. Today, this wedding, is a rehearsal.  As 1 Corinthians 2:9 says in some version, “Baby, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

And that includes the roles we will play and jobs we will have some day. As we watch our roles shift, losing some we love, gaining some we don’t, we can take comfort in that. It’s all rehearsal.