Holy Monday: Can I take your place?

In some churches,  holy Monday reflects on the anointing of Jesus feet...

Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair.

I came home from work.  Andrew had stayed home from school sick. So after hugging all the others,  I slipped into his room to check on him. He was miserable.  I could see in his eyes that terrible kind of sick that you can only just wait through.  Nothing helps.  You just suffer.

I asked him if there was anything i could do.  He said no. I asked him if i could get him a drink.  He said he was afraid.  He has thrown up several times and hadnt kept anything down.  Ulrich set to making oral rehydration fluid.  I told Andrew that daddy could use science to make a drink that he wouldn't throw up.  He perked up a little.  He was dehydrated and wanted to drink but was afraid.

Millileter by millileter, I got fluid into him.  He kept it down. He went to bed.

All while I cared from him, I thought how miserable it would be to be that sick and how i would take his place in an instant.

I thought of other moms i know with love fiercer than bullets.  Special needs moms who go to the mat every day to help thier child gain an inch of developmental ground. Who get calls day after day from the school principle, who try therapy after therapy refusing to give up.  Loving harder into every storm. A mom whose heart is so big that on top of her own brood,  she opens her heart and home to a large number of foster kids. She fights for them.  She loves with the ferocity of a Bangal tiger. She dances through days of swimming lessons and social workers with the grace of a  A mom whose son goes in and out of hospice with difficulties breathing... She breathes with him. She celebrates his beauty and shares him with the rest of us... and we are better for it.

I could go on.

Love propels us to do these things.  Without thought or reasoning.  Without a flinch or hesitation.

Love compelled Mary to wipe Jesus's feet with perfume and her own tears. Love compelled Jesus to ride on into Jerusalem.  Love compelled him to tary on under the crushing weight of the tree that would kill him. Love does this.

God loves like this.