Trudy Beyak - The Mother Heart of God: Unveiling the Mystery of the Fathers Maternal Love

VINCENT VAN GOGH preferred to paint people rather than cathedrals because he said the eyes reveal the inward soul, whether a poor beggar or a street worker.

As a journalist, I am also drawn to the eyes of the people I interview.

Whether meeting musicians or murderers, scientists or six-year-old children, I not only listen to the voices and wait on the words, but stay on the unspoken in the eyes. What lies behind those transparent windows to the soul?

The first pair of eyes that hold me are my mothers.

I am seven years old, cuddling with Mom in church and running my fingers over and over again in circles across her soft velvety fur coat. I imagine she is a fuzzy mother bear. She is a short, bosomy, fun-loving woman with brown lustrous curls and big blue eyes like Bette Davis.

Sitting on the hard wooden pews and hiding under her luxurious fur coat, I feel totally safe in her warmth. I listen to sermons about the love of God, spending hours with my eyes transfixed on a large wooden cross hanging midair above the pulpit. It is powerful stuff for a young girl looking around at the stained-glass windows with scenes of people being healed and Jesus holding little children on his lap.

I know without a shadow of doubt that God loves me.

My mother prods me to be a missionary when I grow up.

Well, I dont know about that idea, Mom, I say quietly, already acutely aware in my few years of life there is a nonconforming side to my personality.

She hugs me anyway.

A soft-hearted woman, Mom rescues abandoned children who are in need of a loving home because she believes love conquers all evil.

With arms open wide to embrace the rejected in society, our house may best be described as a noisy multicultural carnival. In addition to raising me and my three biological brothers, my parents open our home to an array of foster kids.

Mom also gives free respite to the weary parents of a severely disabled girl. Little Jody continually screams and bangs her head. Not surprisingly, it is chaos in our kitchen where all the action is.

My parents end up adopting two little boysJohnny, an Asian youngster, and Louie, a Native American boy who suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome. They are innocent, live-wired boys. While they may not have grown inside her own womb, Mom assures the boys they were formed in a much, much better place.

You see, my wonderful, precious boys, youre so special I actually chose you to grow in my heart! she says. See! She points under her amply endowed bosom.

You grew right here inside my heart. Right here! she says as she kisses the top of their foreheads and elevates their position to the top of the family hierarchy. It is completely fair according to Moms Rule of Justice that these boys, who had been abandoned, would be so luxuriantly pampered in our home.

The whole family buys into that love.

It is the way of Gods compassion.

Mom loves these ragamuffin orphans with great kindness, and as I watch her shower them with love, I too feel the exhilarating, liberating power of love.

Little Johnny had been discarded by his real mom and dad and tossed back and forth between three foster homes by the time he was eleven months old. The brown-eyed boy steals Moms heart as soon as he moves in.

Never again will you feel alone, she says to him.

We all nod. Johnny is Moms boy to stay.

She feels every one of his tears of pain. As he grows to be a teenager, she tells the social workers that Johnny needs a good counselor because he keeps getting into trouble with the law. He crashes a car. His teachers kick him out of class. Meanwhile, Mom prays to God to help her be as patient with him as God is.

She never stops loving him.

Mom worries helplessly, year after year, trying to get him help. But she is stymied by a social system that ignores his developing identity crisis and struggle with homosexuality. Finally, at age twenty-five, he is HIV positive and commits suicide.

Anguish now dims the bright blue in my mothers eyes....

Nine months after Johnny diedjust about the time it takes to conceive, carry, and deliver another childLouie, my other adopted brother, dies in a car accident.

Louie, whose heritage includes a long line of alcoholics, is twenty-one years old and drinking beer with a carload of friends, skidding along the Fraser Canyon Highway. Crashing boulders claim the neural endings of his brain, a sensitive, kind young man whose legacy is a fatal brain injury. Mom had tenderly loved this boy too, nurturing him with hefty cheek kisses and hugs, warning him not to drink because his genes carry the alcoholic weakness.

Another part of Moms all-embracing heart collapses.

Yet she carries on. Still her faith remains strong.

God knows our hearts, she says as she tries to make sense of the tragedies. She continues to trust in the God of love and justice who will eventually wipe away all sorrow and all tears and make the crooked things of this woeful world straight.

All things will pass away one day, she says. We are only here on Earth for a very short time, so while we still have life in us, we must never stop loving others.

As she comforts me, I realize much later in life that she had modeled in her own special way the kindness of God who comforts us in all of our afflictions.

Thus begins this story.

When the pink blossoms fall once more in another season, I am an investigative journalist breaking news stories, exposing political scandals, and writing human-interest stories.

I am continually inspired by Moms Rule of Justice.

Pursuing the truth with compassion drives my work as I try to treat people with respect and kindness, and my news stories often rescue victims of physical and emotional suffering, discrimination, and other social injustices. For twenty years, I help shut down dishonest politicians and report evidence that jails criminals and pedophiles, and I play a critical role in closing the doors of corporations involved in unethical practices.

How?

By simply exposing the truth in print!

Words are powerful motivators in the pursuit of justice.

I am faithfully pursuing the passions of my heart as a journalist when God hands me a new assignmentone that seems almost impossible to fathom. It happens one day with no advance notice or fanfare while I am on a winter holiday and too tired to write any more. Relaxing on the island of Maui on a sun-drenched morning, I am looking forward to snorkeling with the yellow butterfly fish and working on nothing more strenuous than my sorry-looking tan.

Political controversies are far from my mind.

Reading the Holy Bible that warm morning during my study and prayer time, I am impressed by Genesis 1:27 in which Moses beautifully portrays how the male and the female together are made in the image of God, Imago Dei.

As I think about this, it suddenly strikes me that the woman, therefore, must reflect the nature of God in some mysterious wayno less than the man.

The feeling that washes over me is warm and electrifying.

Why had I not noticed this before?

I think about my fathers strength and his enterprising energy and how his paternal kindness is modeled by my kind heavenly Father. Then I start wondering if my mothers compassion might be a hint there is also a maternal side to Gods love. Leaning back in an open place, I take a deep breath.

Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.

Exodus 3:5 NIV

Placing my sandals by the door, I step into a holy place and remain quiet for a very long time. Months meld into years of prayer as I immerse myself in the study of the Holy Bible that has left me in complete awe of the