I woke up three hours early this morning. God’s to blame. She always uses the early morning to nudge me about the things that are good for me. The trouble is, I wake with the nudge, and then have to work at figuring out what the nudge is telling me. That’s why I’m writing now – to figure out this morning’s nudge.

I woke with worried thoughts about my children. My kids, of course, think I worry too much. All kids think their mothers worry too much. They don’t know the half of it, because for a good portion of the time I have spent worrying about these particular children, they were too young to know any better. Then, when they were old enough to understand my worry, they were unconscious – figuratively and/or literally – in bars or hospital beds. Now they are grown up, living wonderful and meaningful lives, and my responsibility for their safety is long over. But still I worry. Because there is so much life still ahead of them, and I know – deeply – that neither I nor anyone else can protect them from the hard parts.

“Whoa,” says God. “What about me?”

This was the accomplishment of a mother who used to chant God’s praises with her young son sitting in her lap each morning. We would each supply some of the words of the prayer: “Praise God, all you dewdrops and maple leaves! Praise God, all you bumblebees and dragonflies! Praise God, all you worms and Spiderman!” I didn’t think God would mind too much about Spiderman, since this beautiful, innocent, bright-faced little boy was learning to love singing to God.

So to leave God out of my conversations with my teen and young adult sons was no easy task. But I managed it. I continued to pray for them. But I have made a terrible error. I haven’t understood how important conversation was to tending the relationship between my sons and their own Inner Light. I have been shown that it doesn’t matter where the conversation happens, but happen it must. When I stopped talking to them about God, I could have intensified my talking to God about them. But I didn’t. As a result, my prayers about my sons became fewer, further between, and less juicy.  It became a matter of going to God when they were in real trouble, but otherwise not really thinking of God and them together in the same thought, as if they inhabited different lands within my fractured psyche.

I thank you for my sons, for their partners, and for their children, the ones who are here and the ones who will come. I thank you for our ancestors, who did their best and got us this far. I thank you for our descendants, the future generations, who will carry us further. I thank you for pulling me up short, and for reminding me: “What about You?"