• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Mothering Spirit

everyday parenting as spiritual practice

  • About
    • About Laura
    • New Here?
    • Popular Posts
    • Contact Me
    • Privacy Policy
    • Insta-Links
    • My Newsletter
  • My Books
    • Grieving Together: A Couple’s Journey through Miscarriage
    • Prayers for Pregnancy & Birth
    • Everyday Sacrament: The Messy Grace of Parenting
    • To Bless Our Callings: Prayers, Poems, and Hymns to Celebrate Vocation
    • Living Your Discipleship: 7 Ways to Express Your Deepest Calling
    • Little Rock Scripture Studies
  • After Loss
    • what to do when a friend loses a baby
    • what to do for kids when their sibling dies
  • prayers for pregnancy
    • The Complete E-Books
    • Trying to Conceive
    • Month One
    • Month Two
    • Month Three
    • Month Four
    • Month Five
    • Month Six
    • Month Seven
    • Month Eight
    • Month Nine
    • Infertility
    • Miscarriage
    • Morning Sickness
  • Prayers for Parenting
  • For You
    • favorite resources for parents
    • faith resources for ministers
  • Show Search
Hide Search

ash wednesday: every parent’s nightmare

9 Comments

Last night I lingered in a long line of blinking tail lights to turn into the parking lot. I wondered about the growing crowds at each year’s Ash Wednesday services. What packs the pews this evening every Lent?

As I waited, I thought of four young girls killed in a weekend car crash. Freshmen roommates, victims of a mild winter’s rare snow storm. One was from our town. Another was our sitter’s co-worker. Shiny senior portraits show girls on the brink of adulthood, bright-eyed and smiling. Lots of ashes at their loss.

I looked around at faces, young and old, as I entered the church. Many at Mass knew and loved those girls. What does Lent mean when we’re staring at death?

Before I left home that evening, my husband had told me a story he’d heard about the American reporter killed in Syria. The night before she died in the bomb blast, she told of the suffering of women and children, often the focus of her wartime front-line reporting.

“I watched a little baby die today,” she told the BBC on Tuesday. “Absolutely horrific, a 2-year old child had been hit. They stripped it and found the shrapnel had gone into the left chest and the doctor said ‘I can’t do anything.’ His little tummy just kept heaving until he died.”

“Stop,” I cut him off before he finished telling me the story. “Stop. I literally cannot hear that.” I scooped up my own 2 year-old and squeezed his squirming limbs to my chest.

“My love,” I whispered into his hair as he wrestled out of my grasp. Overwhelmed at the thought of losing life closest to my own.

I prayed about both stories in the pew. Death close to home and far away. Parents living my worst nightmare. Mothers watching their babies blown apart, fathers sobbing at their daughters’ death. I hated to think about it. But I made myself sit with the terror of such loss.

Who doesn’t want to flip the page when they see the news? Who doesn’t want to turn their head from the TV’s wail? We shy away from the horror because it is too much for us to bear. And yet each day parents wake to our worst nightmare. Cancer. Suicide. Car crash. Overdose. Babies born too early; teenagers gone too soon.

I stared up at the cross while people shuffled forward to get their ashes. I remembered that at the heart of Christ’s story, too, stands this terrible tension. A mother holding her dead son’s body.

We have to sit with this image, this terror and sorrow. And not only on Good Friday, the day of death that makes us squirm so uncomfortably in the pews. But also Ash Wednesday. Ashes on our foreheads, burnt and smeared, remind us that we each will meet death. Even the young and the lovely among us.

A family filed down the aisle in front of me. In the mother’s arms was a tiny girl with blond curls. She, too, was marked with dark ash. What did her mother see when she looked down at the sweet face smeared with soot? A reminder of her child’s mortality? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Why do so many people come back to church this night? Perhaps because Ash Wednesday helps us make sense of life’s fragility. We ritualize our own mortality to remind us to turn from sin to life-giving love.

Ash Wednesday gathers us together as a church and reminds us that our community cares about the deepest realities of our lives. It gently leads us to the edge of our fears and shows us a way to live through the suffering. It shakes us loose from the clench of loss and speaks truth of rising after dying.

A stranger smudges soot on our skin, and the traces tickle our nose. Teenagers elbow each other and snicker at the size of each others’ crosses. Wide-eyed children peer over their parent’s shoulder, innocent of the dark sign they now bear on their forehead, as mortal as the rest of us.

This sacramental sign holds us in tensions we’d rather shudder off – we’re sinful, we’re mortal, we’re human – and transforms them from terrifying to something holy. Something we can hold.

If even for one night.

Share this:

  • Share
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Related

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Ginny at Random Acts of Momness says

    24 February 2012 at 1:15 am

    I couldn’t make it to Mass yesterday, alas, so it was great to read this post and to “virtually” experience the ritual of the ashes. You are so right about our need to acknowledge pain and suffering and mortality — these terrible things are so hard to face, and yet ignoring them brings a different kind of pain. I love that our faith acknowledges the existence of suffering, and offers us rituals to help us confront it and, in a way, contain it.

    Have a blessed Lent!

    Reply
    • mothering spirit says

      24 February 2012 at 5:03 pm

      Ooo, good point, Ginny: “and yet ignoring them brings a different kind of pain.” Our rituals do help us confront and contain the painful side of living, and perhaps that’s precisely why they can be so freeing. It’s like the sacrament of reconciliation. Who wants to share their sins and failings with another human being? But the lightness and grace that follows – wow. Absolutely worth it.

      Reply
  2. Peg Conway says

    24 February 2012 at 11:16 pm

    The deaths of young people is so heartbreaking. It’s happened several times in our community over the past couple years due to extended and sudden illness, accident and tragic behavior. (My husband is a high school teacher and our children are teens/young adults, so it hits us all.) Prayer in community is the only solace I know.

    Reply
    • mothering spirit says

      25 February 2012 at 8:43 am

      So true, Peg. There’s no sense to be made of such tragedy. But there can be solace – the gift of gathering with those we love.

      Reply
  3. Liz says

    26 March 2012 at 3:31 pm

    This post brought me back to a very powerful moment I experienced a few Ash Wednesdays ago…..I was offering the imposition of the ashes at our service when a woman in our congregation with very advanced MS came forward in her wheelchair. As I made the sign of the cross on her forehead and said the words, “You are dust and to dust you shall return,” I was struck by how close to that reality she likely was. Most of us who knew her imagined she would not live very much longer and would indeed soon be dust. But immediately behind her in line to receive the ashes was a four-year old girl that had come to be part of our church as well. And I realized that I would put the same mark on her and say the same words, though I hope beyond hope she has much of her journey ahead. But how profound a message to proclaim the fragility of us all at once….one of the realities of Ash Wednesday that I truly cherish.

    Reply
    • mothering spirit says

      29 March 2012 at 2:26 pm

      Your story gave me goosebumps. We are all dust, and we never know how soon that truth will surface in our lives. You put your finger on what I love about Ash Wednesday – that it gathers us together in all our fragility and reminds us that not only are we in this together, but we’re in Christ together. Which changes everything we think we know about life, and death.

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. on surprises: lenten and papal « mothering spirit says:
    12 February 2013 at 9:37 am

    […] Ever try to find a parking spot at an Ash Wednesday service five minutes before it starts? Good luck. Catholic churches are crammed on this unofficial holy day. Every year I notice more and more people packed into the pews. Something about this simple penitential practice, this smear of ash on foreheads, touches us deeply. […]

    Reply
  2. morbid? motherhood & mortality | mothering spirit says:
    18 March 2014 at 8:19 am

    […] is my favorite part of Ash Wednesday. That for once we don’t banish babies to the nursery or preschoolers to the Sunday School […]

    Reply
  3. lent: what we need is here | mothering spirit says:
    18 February 2015 at 6:00 am

    […] Each year I write about Ash Wednesday. A mother’s prayer to mark the day. A reflection on motherhood and mortality. Thoughts on tragedies global and local that cross Lent’s path. […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

About Laura

I’m Laura Kelly Fanucci. Mother, writer, wonderer. This space is where I explore mothering through writing. It’s where I celebrate how God shows up in the chaos of raising children. It’s where I love to build community with readers like you. Read More…

Follow Laura

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
Laura Kelly Fanucci
Books by Laura Kelly Fanucci
e-books by Laura Kelly Fanucci

Mothering Spirit Newsletter

Henri Nouwen quote

From the Archives

Footer

Follow Me on Facebook

Follow Me on Facebook

Follow me on Twitter

Tweets by laurakfanucci

Follow Me on Instagram

thismessygrace

thismessygrace
Nearly 20 years ago (!) these crazy kids graduated Nearly 20 years ago (!) these crazy kids graduated from Notre Dame. Now we’re thick in the midst of life-with-kids, celebrating middle school & preschool & everything in between. 
 
Since June is a month for graduations & celebrations, I’m delighted to help you celebrate with @grottonetwork .

Grotto Network shares stories about life, work, faith, relationships, and more. Check out their videos, podcast, and articles to help you reflect on where you are in your journey.
 
Grotto Network has generously given 2-$100 gift cards to Bloomin’ Brands Restaurants (Outback, Carrabba’s, Bonefish Grill & more) to help you celebrate this month with friends & family! It’s a huge giveaway, because we all need to savor and celebrate whatever joy we can find these days.
 
To enter the giveaway, follow @grottonetwork and @thismessygrace and leave a comment below about what you’re celebrating this month. Tag a friend for extra entries (up to 3).
 
Rules: Open to the U.S. only. Entries will be accepted until 6/11/22 at 11:59 pm CT. The 2 winners will be chosen at random and announced on 6/12/22. Per Instagram rules, this promotion is in no way sponsored, administered, or associated with Instagram, Inc. By entering, entrants confirm that they are 13+ years of age, release Instagram of responsibility, and agree to Instagram's terms of use.
“How did you do this?” I want to ask her. “H “How did you do this?” I want to ask her. “How did you let your heart break a thousand times?”

I want to call my mother and ask her impossible questions, to probe her heart that held five children and let each of us go in the hardest ways. But I know what she will say, “It’s hard. But you’re doing a beautiful job.” She can’t give words to the deepest yearnings and groanings. None of us can.

I wish I could ask my grandmothers, each of them gone for decades now, each of them matriarchs who raised big broods of their own. I never got to know them as an adult, but I have heaps of questions: How did you do it? How did you not lose yourself or your way? Or did you, and that was precisely the point?

I want a whole book of answers to impossible questions, and none exists. So I send my thoughts to the mothers of faith whose short stories, mere snippets on pages, have sparked small lights to guide me along. To Sarah and Ruth, Hagar and Rachel, Mary and Elizabeth. Every unnamed anguish the holy ones carried, every treasure of love they held in their heart.

Is it any coincidence that birth often brings both cries and screams, laughter and joy?

We hold it all within us. We cannot give words to the enormity of what it means to mother.

I sit outside a coffee shop two blocks from my children’s school on a sunny afternoon, the last day of the year. I wipe away tears for the natural nostalgia, but I also feel the gutting grief welling up from my own wounds of motherhood to know a deeper truth: marking milestones with love and longing is nothing compared to the gaping loss of not having your child here to break your heart in a thousand tiny ways.

So I resolve again, a hundred times again, to let this vulnerability become the strength that keeps me fighting for all children to have what I want for my own: life, love, health, safety, support, opportunity, community, hope. This is how parenting asks us to change. To let the particulars of our lives stretch us to love more widely.

I once thought “to mother” meant to have and to hold.

Now I know it also means to let go.
Many of you asked me to save these suggestions I s Many of you asked me to save these suggestions I shared after the school shooting in Uvalde.

Remember: we can’t do everything, but we can each do something.

Just because we can’t eradicate evil overnight doesn’t mean we can’t take small strong steps toward change.

Any work for justice and peace is long and hard. But we can build this work into our daily lives in concrete ways.

Look at the children in your life. What would you do to keep them safe and alive?

Start there. Let your life and love lead you.
When women meet, the world changes. Today is the When women meet, the world changes.

Today is the Feast of the Visitation. A day when we remember the meeting of Mary and Elizabeth.

Two women pregnant with new life, blooming with prophetic power.
Two mothers called to change the world.

What would happen if we gathered together like this today?
How could the world change if we made Mary’s song our own?

“He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.”
(Luke 1:51-53)

Imagine if we stayed in this holy space—not for a moment’s meeting, but for months together—to gestate the dreams God was waiting to birth through us.

Imagine if we let ourselves be filled with the Holy Spirit to shout out with loud cries.
Imagine if we lifted our souls with prayers of justice and joy.

Imagine if we gave each other strength and service, courage and compassion, as we kept asking how to answer God’s call in our ordinary lives.

When women meet, the world changes.

If you want to know how to fight for justice for your children, for your people, for this world, look to the Visitation.

The mothers will show us the way. They already have.

(Image from the “Windsock Visitation” by Br. Mickey McGrath, OSFS, commissioned for the Monastery of the Visitation in north Minneapolis.)
Here’s what I wish I would have heard preached t Here’s what I wish I would have heard preached today on the Ascension.

Right now is a time to be prophetic and pastoral, a time for each of us to ask how God is calling us to act.
I am writing this to us next week. When our right I am writing this to us next week.

When our righteous anger will have quieted down. When the white-hot fury pulsing through our veins will have subsided. When the news cycle will have moved on.

Do not forget how we felt tonight.
Stay angry. Flip tables.

We cannot live like this. Literally—our children are dying. Our elders are being murdered. We have accepted violence as—a way of life? An unfortunate side effect of freedom? A helpless shrug?

No. I am not resigned.
Stay angry. Flip tables.

Remember how it felt today to hear the news and feel the world crack open—again, for we have heard it a hundred times now. Remember how you felt sick to your stomach. How the children around you glowed, alive and fragile, miraculous and vulnerable.

Remember how you wanted to do something, anything, how you wanted to act, how you wanted to stop and scream for it to end, how every cell in your body cried out that this was evil and unjust and horrific and cannot continue.

Press into that memory like a bruise.
Stay angry. Flip tables.

The only way anything changes is if we change. Change what we believe. Change who we support. Change how we vote. Change where we give. Change how we act. Change how we speak. Change how we pray.

There are no easy answers to terrible, complex problems—which is what gun violence in the US has become. But the lack of easy answers makes it all the more urgent and vital that we press into our righteous anger and say NO MORE.

Stay angry. Flip tables.

I am writing this for us, for tonight, for next week. And I never want to write it again.
Load More... Follow Laura on Instagram

Copyright © 2022 Laura Kelly Fanucci · site customizations by Jamie Jorczak

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. Please click "accept" to keep reading. You can opt-out if you wish.Accept Reject Read More
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT