Tag Team: On Fidelity, Worry, and Trusting Mary

by Lori Wilson

"I am the Lord's servant. May your word to me be fulfilled." — Luke 1:38

Guadalupe by Jen Norton

I have a confession to make. I am a worrier.

Not about everything, but about the people I love most. My children. My grandchildren. The ones whose lives I cannot control and whose struggles I cannot fix, no matter how much I want to. There are moments when the worry becomes so loud that it crowds out everything else. I can feel it taking up space that I need for other things, for the people in front of me, for the work I am called to do, for the simple ability to be present to my own life.

It was in one of those moments that I stumbled into what I can only call a tag team arrangement with Mary.

It goes something like this. When the worry becomes too much, when I can feel it pulling me under, I turn to her, and I say something like: Mary, I have to go. I have things I need to do, and I cannot keep carrying this right now. Will you take over for a while? Pray for them while I am busy. I will return to them when I can.

And then I go. And she stays.

I have come to trust it completely. Because Mary, of all people, knows what it is to love someone whose life you cannot control. She said yes to something she didn't fully understand, carried a child she knew would suffer, and stood at the foot of a cross she could not stop. And through all of it, the uncertainty, the loss, the waiting, she remained. Faithful. Present. Trusting.

That fidelity didn't end at the cross. It runs all the way through history, through Guadalupe, through every generation of people who have brought her their worries and their love and said, "I need help carrying this."

There was a time when my brother was going through something very difficult. My mom and I were both carrying the worry of it, and it was heavy for both of us. At some point, we decided to really ask Mary for help. We said a novena together. We placed my brother in her care and trusted her to hold him.

The day after that novena ended, my brother called.

I cannot prove what happened. I can only tell you what I know. Mary was faithful. She stayed with him when we needed to step away for a while. And something shifted.

This is what Our Lady of Guadalupe teaches me every December when her feast comes around. She appeared to Juan Diego, not to a bishop, not to someone the world considered important, but to a man the powerful would have overlooked, and she said I am here. I see you. Go and tell them. And when no one believed him, she sent him back. And when he was afraid, she said, "Am I not here? I who am your mother?"

That is the fidelity I am talking about. Not a distant, formal intercession. A mother who stays. Who sends you back into the hard thing. Who tucks the sacred into the fabric of your ordinary life, the way her image appeared on Juan Diego's tilma, carried close to his body without him even knowing it was there.

I think that is what happens in the tag team. She carries what I cannot. And while she is holding it, I find I can breathe again. I can return to what is in front of me. And when I come back, I am steadier than when I left.

Maybe that is what Mary's yes really means, not just the single moment in Nazareth when the angel came, but the whole long faithful yes that followed. The yes that kept going. The yes that still goes.

I want to learn to say yes like that. 

Reflection Questions

• Is there someone you love whose life you cannot control, and whose situation has become too heavy to carry alone? What would it mean to place them in Mary's care, even just for a while?

• Where in your own life do you experience the kind of fidelity Mary embodies, the love that simply stays, through uncertainty and fear and waiting?

• Juan Diego carried the sacred close to his body without knowing it was there. What might you be carrying right now, a grace, a calling, a gift, that you haven't yet recognized?

• What does Mary's yes invite in you today? Is there something you are being asked to say yes to, not all at once, but one faithful step at a time?

Closing Prayer

Mary, you know what it is to love someone whose life you cannot control. You said yes before you could see the whole picture. You stood at the foot of what you could not stop. And you stayed.

Thank you for staying. Thank you for the tag team, for taking over when I cannot hold it anymore, for carrying what is too heavy for me, for praying for the ones I love when I need to step away for a while.

Teach me your fidelity. The long, quiet, faithful yes that doesn't ask for guarantees or wait until the way is clear.

And when I am afraid, remind me that you are here. That you have always been here. That you are not going anywhere.  Amen.