Sweet Pie

One of the sweetest memories I have of my mom was in late summer, in the last month of her battle with brain cancer. She made strawberry rhubarb pie, but, because of her illness, forgot the sugar. If you know anything about rhubarb, it is tart beyond reason!

That was the sweetest pie I ever tasted.

All the love she had for us, even though she was barely able to walk or stand, was folded into that pie. We tucked up to the kitchen table and she watched us take our first bite. “It isn’t good, is it?” she whispered.

And I said, “Mom, it is just fine. It is just fine.”

Every bite held a sacred sadness and a profound realization of just how loved I was.; it was as if she packed the sweetness of her love in the pie and forgot the sugar.

I found love in that pie. And I think the goal of our life is to find love. Let it ground us and hold us as the waves of uncertainty, change, transition, and loss wash over us.

What would it take to set aside the judgement of what appears before us (bad pie?) and acknowledge that others are doing the best they can? I remember the morning, it has been 27 years, but it feels like yesterday. It would be our last visit home, the last fork-full of her fruit pies. She would be gone within weeks.

As August sputters out like a spent candle, these memories burn within me. So, I will acknowledge that grief needs space, tears can fall and as I remember my mom, I can bake a pie in her honor, intentionally adding the sweetness of love to my pie, my jam, my words, and my life.

How about you?

~ Will you bring love and find love in others?

~Will you look for the love in others, in the conversation, in the situation?

~Will you trust that the love you need is right there, hidden in the pie?

“You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in Your bottle.

You have recorded each one in Your book.”

Psalm 56:8