Everything.

Sometimes I wonder if Mary asked God, "Can't Jesus just be my son?"
He was so many things to so many people. A healer, savior, rabbi, friend, preacher, threat. May be sometimes she just wanted to stop everyone and everything and say "But He's my son."

But He couldn't ever just be Mary's son, or the son of a carpenter. He couldn't just be a healer, a rabbi. He was Mary's Jesus. But He couldn't ever just be her son.

I feel the strain sometimes, being so many things to so many people, only He was much better at it than I am now. He understood and practiced something that I"m learning everyday: "My role as a child of God is pivotal. It must be."

"But can't I just be __________?"

No, because we are children of God. And because we are children of God, we fulfill those other roles. I think Jesus understood that truth. Whether He learned it or just knew it, He understood it.

We long for someone to see us in all our fullness, but no one does. Not even ourselves. Only God, and there's something about Him and His complete view of us that we are curious about that also strikes fear.

May be sometimes God feels about us as Mary may have felt about her Jesus. I try to do, do, do, to be His servant, worshiper, disciple. And He says, "Whitney, can't you just be my child?"

Because God sees what Mary eventually, or perhaps always did, see. That to be God's child is to be everything He calls us to be. But without His sonship, everything is nothing. at. all.