Towards the end of my summer vacation I flew to West Palm Beach, Florida to visit with my mother. It was a wonderful visit. Something I didn’t expect on my visit was how different it would feel to be with my mom while pregnant. It was an awesome feeling to be pregnant, spending time with the woman who gave birth to me. It was also strange, though, because I was in a life position in which I have never been. I had always been my mother’s daughter, but now I was preparing to give birth to a daughter. Now I too was in the role of mother.

Realizing this change made me think back on all the different phases I’ve gone through in my life, particularly in relationship to my mother. I have been to her a newborn, toddler, kindergartner, teenager, college student, domestic violence worker, seminarian, married woman, deacon, priest, and now mother. I realized that in all of these stages I have related differently to my mom. I went from being completely dependent on her, to rebelling against her, to eventually becoming her friend. She has become a person with whom I share a great deal of my life and someone who I have begun to understand on a much deeper level—someone who I love now more than I ever have. Think about the many life phases you have been through in your life. Haven’t we all been many different kinds of people in our relationships throughout those phases?

My junior year of college I saw this gospel passage, the parable of the sower, acted out for the first time. And, for the first time, it started to make sense.

[Read Matthew 13:16-23]

My junior year of college, though, I understood it more as the kind of passage that evokes fear. If I hear the word of God and don’t understand it, Satan snatches me away without warning, like a thief in the night. If I’m the kind of person who immediately receives the word of God with joy, but forget to pray and read the Bible as often as I should, then I haven’t established the necessary roots in the word. When trouble arises, then, I will immediately fall away from the kingdom of heaven, from salvation. If I hear and believe the word of God, but am at some point led away by the cares of the world or by the lure of wealth, then the word of God is worthless to me. I wasted my time and, more importantly, God’s. Only if I hear the word of God, understand it, and then do the work of God in the world at all times could I possibly obtain salvation.

It was only in my visit with my mother that I was able to read this passage differently. It is not a passage that evokes fear, but is instead one that constantly calls us to new life. This passage describes the many phases we go through in our relationship to God. There will be times of trouble in our lives when we will fall away from God. There will be times in our lives when the cares of this world, like the presidential race, or the lures of wealth, like needing to have that perfect, high paying job, will result in the weakening of our relationship with Christ. But this is not “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”—these phases in our relationship with God are not the final answer.

The final answer is always God’s love for us. It is always God’s grace. It is the living through of these stages, in fact, that leads us to a place where the word of God is able to fall on good soil, where we understand the word of God and are actually able to do the work of God in this world.

I was not born being friends with my mother. I was not born loving her in the way I do now. That took work—lots of work, time, and a great number of life phases. I imagine, in fact, that 10 years from now I will be even better friends with my mom and will love her even more than I do now.

We are not born having Jesus as our best friend. We are not born loving God to the greatest of our ability. Instead of feeling guilty about that, though, I ask that we understand our relationship with Christ as a journey, not a destination that we either have or have not reached. We will go through phase after phase in our relationship with Christ. Loving God takes work—lots of work, time, and a great number of phases. The point is that we are always moving towards loving God—moving towards understanding the word of God and doing God’s work in the world. That is, I believe, why Jesus’ last example in his parable of the sower is the example of the person who always understands God’s word and does God’s work. It is usually the phase that requires the living through of all the other phases. And, it is the last phase we enter—a phase that is entered only through a great deal of work, struggle, and prayer. But how great that reward is when we do finally become people who always understand the word of God and do God’s work—and love God as fully as we were created to.