When I recently came across the above image, it reminded me of the routine way in which my mother would bless her food when we sat down to eat as a family. As a young boy, I was clueless as to why she would close her eyes, put her hand to her forehead, and say, “Jesus Wept.” As I got older, I found myself wondering why she chose the shortest verse in the Bible as a way of giving thanks for her food. I know for sure that it wasn’t an intentional effort to bypass a long-winded prayer to get to her food any faster. She was too conscientious for that. My intimate experiences with joy and pain have now led me to consider that she may have been expressing something a lot deeper — something that had nothing to do with the food set before her — something so deep that the only safe place to express it outwardly was during sacred prayer time.
There is something intimately profound about the word weep. It resonates on a much deeper level than the word cry. It conveys a sense of anguish that cannot be easily relieved by words or the sympathetic prayers of others. While I’ll never fully know what my mother felt when she sat at the table to pray, my intuition tells me that she was anguished by something. Maybe it was the methods that her husband (my father) practiced in his efforts to make real men out of his boys. Maybe it was the silencing of her voice, that was often drowned out by my father’s need for control. Maybe it was his allegiance to a type of masculinity that often caused him to be emotionally unavailable to his family. Or maybe it was her inability to live fully and unapologetically during the times in which she lived. Whatever her reason, I am sadly reminded of the silent scream I heard in her voice every time she recited the two words — Jesus Wept.
Those two short words, as found in the Bible, are written in the context of someone retelling a story. Hence, we find the verb of the verse written in the past tense. While my mother stayed true to how the verse showed up in the Bible, her simple prayer revealed that she was clearly speaking to something in the present — something that could not be expressed in any other way.
It may very well be true that, in the absence of a safe space in the home to be heard, she found solace and security in the sacred moment of breaking bread. It was here that she could cry out to God in the simplest way she knew how.
I wonder a lot these days. As I think about my mother, who would’ve been 99 years old this month, and when I think about the lived experiences of women, I wonder how many others are quietly weeping, while feeling compelled to don the mask of Superwoman. Incidentally, I failed to mention earlier that every time we sat around that table — for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, we most often partook in a meal that was prepared by my mother’s hands — the hands of a mother who worked a full-time job, while sacrificing herself to tend to the endless needs of a husband and two sons. What I know for sure, is that there is a countless number of men who desire a woman just like my mother. Indeed, a lot of men lust for a “throwback” woman. I wonder if these men realize that the desire for a throwback, often translates into a woman who sacrifices her self so he can feel like a real man. I wonder if these same men also want America to be great again. I wonder. I wonder how many women, despite their achievements in their chosen fields of endeavor, are still anguished by men who refuse to believe that a woman’s personal and professional ascension is achieved by her own merit, rather than a plot to discredit their manhood and marginalize them as men. I wonder. I wonder how many women, like my mother, must find a sacred place to cry out, because they rarely find it in a man’s world. I wonder. And I wonder, now that change is on the horizon, how many men are angrily sulking at the thought of losing power and sharing this planet with those they once marginalized. I wonder what my mother, born in 1924, would think about all this, as we approach 2024. I wonder who she would be and what she’d be doing. I wonder if she’d still bless her food with the same two words.
As for me, while I have wept and wondered from time to time, I will not spend the rest of my life doing either. I will spend the rest of my time creating the kind of world that my mother would rejoice in, would thrive in, would find freedom in. I choose to believe that my mother wept and sacrificed so my brother and I wouldn’t spend our lives weeping or wondering. I also choose to believe that our brother, Jesus, did the same.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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Photo credit: Kingsley Osei-Abrah on Unsplash
