All I can think about is Mary.

When I close my eyes on this rainy, seemingly hopeless, somehow perfect night, all I can see is her sweet face.

Can you imagine watching your baby boy be nailed to a cross? Your baby boy. You aren’t watching someone kill a stranger. You are watching soldiers take your son and spit in His face. The same little boy that you fell in love with the first moment you laid eyes on Him in that stable thirty-three years ago. Oh, and to watch that whip. Every time that whip hits your little boy you cringe. You want to yell, “don’t do it again!” and right then you catch a glimpse of the scar on his leg. And you remember how he got that scar when He was playing with His Daddy outside twenty-five years ago. How you wish that was the only scar on His body. And then you watch them take a hammer and hit the nails into your perfect little boy. Your stomach sinks and your heart is torn in half because you love those hands. You had those tiny warm hands touch your cheeks and lean in close for a bedtime kiss. You’ve watched those hands hug and hold and heal as your baby has turned into a sinless, selfless, perfect man. And now, those perfect, sweet little hands that you have grown to love are being crushed in front of your eyes. And all you can do is just fall to your face and cry. And every once in a while, only when you have the strength, you raise up on your knees and kiss your precious little boys feet. You press your lips up to those feet and you squeeze your eyes shut and you pray for God to take this pain away quickly. You pray that it happens fast and you can take your precious one down from that rugged cross and hold Him in your arms where He should be. And just as you ask for that, you watch Him breathe in one last time, and you hear the words, “It is finished,” and you let out one more sob as you press His still-warm feet to your cheek.

And there is no understanding in that moment. There are no cliché comments made like “You’ll get through it,” or “It all happens for a reason,” because for heaven’s sake, this woman just watched her little boy die. Die on a public, humiliating, disgraceful cross at that.  And she knows, deep down, that this was supposed to happen…that it was His will. But it still hurts. She knows there is purpose but she just can’t think of that right now. It just still hurts. It’s her little boy.

Tonight, when I close my eyes and think about that night thousands of years ago when my Savior hung on a cross, I can’t help but wonder who was at His feet. I try to imagine myself 2,000 years ago and wonder where I would have been. Would I have been shouting with the crowds to “Crucify Him?” Would I have been at home cleaning the house because I didn’t believe that He was the One? Would I have been sitting right next to Mary? Would I have put my chin on her shoulder and my arms around her and held her as she watched her little boy die? Would I have stayed the whole day, right at His feet? Would I have cried until there were just no more tears? Would I have run up and hugged his feet and tried to wipe the blood stains off of my blameless Savior whose feet were not worthy of blood?

God, I hope so.

God, let me have a heart like your Momma’s. Let my heart break like hers.

What I would have given to see her smile on Sunday morning when she got to see her little boy. Her perfect little boy, restored. What I would given to have seen that hug—that joyful, thankful, heart-wrenching hug that her son was alive, and even more so, that her God was faithful.

Oh, God, help me love you like your Momma did.