Have you ever seen the movie Father of the Bride? The most memorable scene is when Annie comes home from college and during dinner (her first night home) she sits across from her parents and ends up excitedly sharing about some guy she just met three weeks before while on vacation. Her excitement overflows as she bursts out “I’m engaged! I’m getting married!!”

The dad, played by Steve Martin, sits silently staring across the table with a deadpan expression until she insists, “Dad, say something!” In a comedic turn of events, he blinks his eyes and looks again. Instead of seeing his full-grown daughter, he sees a little girl with pigtails chattering away in her high-pitched voice: “Dad, I met a man in Rome and he’s wonderful and he’s brilliant and we’re getting maaaaarried!”

I remember watching that movie with Ethan and his parents nearly twenty years ago. Ethan and I laughed so hard at that scene until his dad looked over in all seriousness. “Don’t laugh. That’s real.”

Now that our girls are getting bigger, I can see why he said that.

I came across an old photo while looking through an old shoebox last night. My brother, all chubby-cheeked and adorable, was maybe two years old at the time. Our paths took different turns in life, and now I sometimes stare across the chasm and marvel at the difference. How did we get here? Although there are only a couple years of difference in our age, I’ve felt more like a mother than a sister to him over the years. This has me thinking about mothers. Their love, their constancy. Their ability to see what others are blind to when brokenness has brought out the worst.

While others may look and see a drug addict, an alcoholic, an ill-tempered fellow given to rage and undisciplined passions- a mother can look at a full-grown man and see the child he used to be.

A mother can remember the years before innocence was stolen. She remembers the chubby cheeks, the adorable laugh, the wild antics of a toddler getting into everything. She can remember the feel of tiny hands tucked in her own, and the loving words that came from eager lips. A mother never forgets.

A mother can look at a disheveled mugshot and see what used to be, what could have been. She has the ability to keep a soft heart towards someone who has wounded others frequently with their waywardness because she knows who they were before things changed.

She grieves the pain that led to addiction – the one that has stolen years – and chooses to save space for forgiveness, even when reconciliation seems light years away. Hope springs eternal because the alternative – the thought change will never come – is a harder load to hold. A mother hopes. She prays. She stays available, even when they disappear for months, years on end.

It’s an interesting thing, trying to keep in touch with someone who has walked away. Sometimes the only way to find out how they’re doing is to search arrest records and obituaries from the last state they were in. And when you do find that mugshot, relief fills you and you thank God they’re still alive. You can still pray. You remind yourself that as long as they’re breathing, there is hope. Hope for change. Restoration. Wholeness. Healing.

So you feed the flicker of hope and remember stories you’ve seen and heard. Others have been this lost, this broken. Others have made that lonely trek home after reaching rock bottom. Some prodigals take longer to come home, but others have made that long trek back- you’ve seen it. So you keep the light on. You wait. You love them from a distance because that’s all they will allow. And maybe sometimes you pull out an old photo and adore their beautiful beginning, while you pray for a better end. Others may give up because they have no idea what a return could look like, but you cannot escape the image of the child they used to be. That child is worth loving. Worth praying for.

Oh God, bless the prodigals and the broken hearts that pray them home.