There is nothing like those three little letters, M.O.M. The word mom can convey so much and it may depend on the particular circumstances at hand. For instance, the shrill sound of “MOM!” may cause a chill to pass through you, because it is the sound of your child being hurt or scared.
Or it may be that the word mom is shrieked because little brother or sister has taken a toy away. It could also be said with a whine, as your child begins to beg for something. So the reality is that the word mom isn’t always welcomed.
But then there are times…sweet moments in life where the word mom just pierces the depths of your heart. I got to experience that this morning.
It has been a very long weekend. At 2:30 a.m. on Sunday, my husband and I got up and began to get ready for the day. We had to take our 17-year-old son and three other men from our church to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Everyone was meeting in the parking lot of our church between 3:30 and 3:45 a.m.
By 4 a.m. we were on the road and by 5:30 a.m. we had arrived at our destination, which is where I had to say goodbye to my son as he was boarding a plane there to take to Miami and then onto Port au Prince, Haiti.
We left O’Hare and made it back for our church’s early service, then went home to try and catch a nap and spent the afternoon on flightaware.com, tracking our son’s flights. My son was able to text me at Miami International to tell me they were boarding. So we watched the tracker, expecting to see the plane take off at any time. But almost one and a half hours later, the plane had still not taken off.
We had no way to know why. We just knew our son was stuck on the runway for one and a half hours. We also knew that at this point there was no way of communicating with him. We had been told that internet service in Haiti isn’t always reliable, so once he was there it wasn’t guaranteed we would hear anything.
It was a relief when we finally saw his plane take off and then we spent the next hour and a half tracking it until it landed in Port au Prince. From that point on, we didn’t know anything else.
So last night we went to our church’s evening service and I asked our pastor who is in charge of the missions projects, if they had heard anything. His response was no and that they didn’t really expect to because of the unreliability of the internet there. I already knew this but the validation caused my heart to sink.
Needless to say I hardly slept last night. Despite getting only 4 hours of sleep the night before and just a half hour nap yesterday afternoon, it was a restless night of sleep.
So then this morning the first thing I did was turn on my phone. But it takes a few moments and while I waited, I began to cry. I missed my son so much and I hated not knowing if he was safe and had arrived at his housing.
Then I heard the ding of a new text message and I glanced at my phone to see these three letters, “Mom.” He had sent a text from his iPod. He was safe and according to him, the housing wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be. That was it. Nothing more, no details or anything. But I was okay with that because all I needed to see was MOM.
If anything, may this help each of us to better appreciate the word mom, even when it’s said in inconvenient moments or said in a tone we don’t care for.
Related Articles:
We Can’t Always Rescue Our Children
Maintaining Your Relationship with Your Teen
Photo by homero chapa in Stockvault