EMBRACE (Five Minute Friday)

(Here’s my regular link up with the lovely FMF Community at http://katemotaung.com/ )

All this week, my mind has been flooded with thoughts of my mum. It’s Mothers’ Day on Sunday but my mum died three years ago and the anniversary was only a few weeks ago. So it’s not surprising that this week’s FMF prompt sparked more memories of her – she loved a cuddle and offered them generously.

I can still remember the softness of her body that moulded to mine whenever we snuggled up. She told me God had deliberately designed her that way for exactly that purpose.

Nowadays my favourite embraces are from my husband and sons. The former always leaves me feeling protected and secure in his strong arms. My eldest son, at 6ft tall, tucks me comfortably under his shoulder with a laughing smile as I wrap my arms around his waist. It reminds me of my dad’s embrace when I was young.

My younger son went through a stage of refusing cuddles, much to his more demonstrative brother’s disappointment. Instead he developed his own signature move we nicknamed the Head First Hug, where he would lean only his face in until cheek to cheek and allow just one arm to go around his shoulders. It wasn’t a standard embrace but it was his and that was always welcome.

I miss my boys’ hugs now they don’t live at home.

But these words from the Bible are playing in my mind, that:

‘The eternal God is your refuge, and his everlasting arms are under you’ (Deuteronomy 33.27).

and Jesus’ words:

‘How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings’ (Matthew 23.37).

So these promises remind me that my whole family, wherever we are, however separated by time and space, always have Someone’s embrace ready and waiting, where we will find security, love and home. We just have to snuggle up.