messymiraculousmommy

I am participating in the six month # INSPIRE2020 challenge, in which Indian Catholic content creators write about a particular topic every month. This month’s topic is Mama Mary. As with every blog, I asked Jesus what I should write about. And He said: write about a controversial mother . Huh? I dropped it for a few days and then asked again. He said: Write about an interview with my mother. Ask the controversial questions that you really want to. This is not the first time Jesus has asked me to do something I’ve never done before. So, here goes…. Me: (clearing throat): Good evening, Mother Mary, uhhh Mama Mary uhhh Mary…what would you prefer to be addressed as? You’ve got so many titles, I’m confused. Is there a special way to address you? Mary: Where I come from, children call their mothers Eema. You can call me whatever you feel comfortable with: Mama, Amma, Ma or just Mary. After all, no matter what you call me, it doesn’t change who I am. Me: Ok. I’ll try ‘Eema’. E...

As the years rolled by, we got more and more comfortable with the variety of people's responses to our family's adoption status. We started enjoying the process of revealing the fact of our children's adoption. We began helping people understand adoption because we really wanted to normalize adoption for every future adoptive family. One of the ways we did that was to allow new people we met to really get a hang of who we were as a family, to get to know our children and us as individuals and then casually slip in the fact that they are genetically unrelated to each other and us. One of the funniest responses we got was: "are they really adopted??!!!" I said "yes". The lady asked again, in complete shock: "so, they are not your own?" I said, "of course they are my own, they are just not born to me." More shock on her face and more free entertainment for me ;) But her question was coming from a place of complete disbelief:...

  Adoption has meant different things to me at different times in my life. As a child, adoption meant the relationship that my school mate shared with her parents who loved her and raised her although she was very obviously not born to them. As a young adult, it meant being very inquisitive about my college mate's internship at an adoption agency, finding opportunities to tag along where I could. As a woman wrestling with ill health and resultant infertility, it meant a distant option that was possible only after I got well enough to care for a child. As a prospective adoptive parent (PAP), it meant figuring out a whole new world through reading books, meeting adoptive families, having a lot of difficult conversations with myself, my spouse, my closest friends and family members. But on the day, I had to sign a legal declaration saying that I would be the main caregiver for a three month old baby I had met only once, it was the beginning of a brand new life. A ...

 I was angry with Jesus and said: How would YOU feel if you prayed for something and got 'NO' as an answer for 30 years? Immediately, I thought I should look up all the prayers Jesus prayed that are mentioned in the Bible and check whether He got what He asked His Father for! After all, if the Father, Son and Spirit agreed on something, there shouldn't be any problem in that becoming a resounding YES, right??!! But before I could look, I knew where the answer was already: John 17: 20-21. When Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane, praying before He consented to suffer and die for all humanity, He was praying for you and me! Yes, YOU and ME! “ I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. " Jesus prayed for us to be united in Him and His Father, just ...

To my dearest sojourners in caregiving, to the parents of young ones, to the caregivers of elderly ones, to the marathon-caregivers of those needing care all their lives, to the ones caring for others even though they need so much care themselves, I'm thinking of you. I know you can't really sleep at night because you have to be alert all the time I know that even when you do sleep, you wake up with a start because it feels like you haven't been alert for your loved one I know how much you pray for them to be free from pain How their pain hurts your heart so piercingly, you can't bear it I know how the days pass so slowly, how the months crawl by, each minute taking its own sweet time. I know how you feel walking slower than you can, living slower than you want to watching other people's lives and wondering when you can do anything you want to,   when you want to again I know how you watch out so closely for every small detail of y...

  There are few things that set human beings apart from animals: being able to communicate complex thoughts through speech and writing is one of them. It's a gift we have, a gift to be able to dig deep into our souls and express the innermost thoughts of our minds in a series of sounds and images that makes perfect sense to other human beings: not just of our generation but for many generations to come. This longing to express, to be heard, to be understood, to hear back from those who connected with you and to be able to influence someone else for their good is wired deep down into all our human hearts. But since the lockdown, there has been an explosion on content on the internet: from rants to memes, from blogs to vlogs, from hashtags to twitter storms: everyone who has the ability to speak/write/sing/dance about anything is out there, belting it out for all to see. And in this context, the day-dreaming writer in me really began questioning whether there was re...