the divine mother

Having read the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone, I began to look deeper into its many meanings and found some personal similarities with Demeter I never saw before. She was a Greek Goddess but also a mother who experienced the pain of having a child who she knew was suffering and could do nothing about it, although she tried. She was a mother whose child was taken from her against her will. I found this story to be very pertinent to my own life with my son Michael. As the story goes, Persephone was picking flowers with not a care in the world when the earth opened up and Hades took her down into the underworld. When Demeter heard her daughter crying out she felt a great pain in her heart.. She was overcome with grief.. Demeter stood in the reality of this horrific pain and went in search of her daughter. I find it fascinating that in the story she doesn't receive any solace from her connection to the spiritual realm and her gods. She abstains from divine food and the putting on of her immortal clothing and takes off to rescue her daughter. What we usually do when in a crisis is cry out to God, but she doesn't.I know in my own story with Michael I found it hard to justify receiving anything good from God. My thinking being, that if he was to console me and not meet Michael's need, which was far greater, what kind of God is he? So yes, I felt like Demeter. This part of her story is central to the mother that I am. Like Persephone playing among the flowers and being swallowed up by the earth, Michael also was playing in the department store, hiding under the clothing racks and being mischievous when out of nowhere he was literally taken down to the underground, if you will, by a seizure. Hearing the cries of her daughter Demeter was struck with pain that was devastating and like the ancient mother I too was struck down with an unbearable pain that has left my heart broken forever. Like Demeter I was inconsolable.... and to be honest .....to this day there is nothing that takes away the pain. Everyday and every night I worry about my son. I know all mothers that have children with disabilities will worry about them throughout their lives-for when we are gone who will care for them? No one can care for them like we do. We believe in them, have hope for them and love them with a love so strong no one can duplicate. Among Michael's caregivers I am called The Mama Bear. I am fierce in my oversight of him. Now that Michael is a young adult I have learned to let go (a little)and trust me it isn't easy. It will probably never be easy to trust that he will be well taken care of. I will never feel that assurance. Unlike Demeter who gets her daughter back, I will never have Michael fully back. I will always grieve and feel the pain of this loss. The loss of knowing he will never experience being in love, marry or drive a car. These are thoughts that break my heart. When he was ten I still held onto the hope that Jesus would heal him but as the days turned into months and the months to years, my hopes were dashed and what remained was a sobering sadness. I joined the millions of others who suffer in silence . I will say this ,the one thing i am learning is that suffering has a mysterious side to it that can bring about a deeper connection to ones soul . Suffering in its very nature can purify us like a devouring fire that burns away at the unessential things in our lives and lays bare our heart and soul. Where we go from there is the ongoing journey, the ups and downs of believing and doubting . But if we never know suffering then it is our tendency to stay consumed with our own egos . So do i believe we all must suffer to know our soul? . No, of course not-but sorrow and suffering cause us to question in a way we usually don't. When we ask the age old question "why do the innocent suffer" and we don't get an answer back, we are left with facing the vast open plains of this very difficult mystery. So then maybe we should not be asking why the suffering, but asking how do we go on from here.
I just got a phone call from Michael's day program letting me know he had another seizure. I want to know of every seizure he has. I have some crazy idea that if i know i can carry part of his burden, then he wont suffer alone. After the phone call I caught myself still questioning after hundreds of seizures, why? but i stopped and resigned myself to the pain....and thats when i allow myself to grieve again, letting the pain in and then letting it out once more.