May Day ... MayDay! MayDay!

I'm chuckling -- noticing the double entendre of the title of this post.  HELP!  That seems to be my every day mantra.  Oh well.
 
According to the wonderful Wikipedia, May Day is related to the Celtic festival of Beltane and the Germanic festival of Walpurgis Night.  May Day falls half a year from November 1 – another cross-quarter day which is also associated with various northern European paganisms and the year in the Northern Hemisphere – and it has traditionally been an occasion for popular and often raucous celebrations. 
 
This is particularly intriguing because I am Scottish and German :-)  I particularly like the reference to "raucous celebrations," though I am mostly rather 'reserved' in my celebration.  I still LIKE the possibility of being raucous ...
 
Of course, the other concept of 'mayday' is that of "an emergency procedure word used internationally as a distress signal in voice procedure radio communications. It may derive from the French expression "venez m'aider", meaning "come help me", the last two syllables of which sound similar to "Mayday". Alternatively, it may have been coined randomly, making the similarity to "m'aidez" coincidental.  It is used to signal a life-threatening emergency primarily by mariners and aviators, but in some countries local organisations such as police forces, firefighters, and transportation organizations also use the term. The call is always given three times in a row ("Mayday Mayday Mayday") to prevent mistaking it for some similar-sounding phrase under noisy conditions, and to distinguish an actual Mayday call from a message about a Mayday call."  (Wikipedia.org)
 
Distress.  Yeh, I have known distress.  I have called out for help.  Remember the prayer of my sweet friend who also lost her husband to a long and ugly illness:  "Help me.  Help me.  Help me."  Mayday!  Mayday!  Mayday!  Sometimes we don't think that our pleas for help -- our simple prayers -- are answered ... well, at least not in the way we hoped.
 
May is always a big month.  College seniors graduate; high school seniors prepare for finals and make choices for college or other life direction ... tulips bloom and tease; gardens get planted, anticipating the last hard freeze.  Mother's Day comes and goes, as does the anniversary of my own mother's death.  (This year, it falls firmly on Mother's Day.  She will have died THIRTY years ago.  Yeh.  What do I do with that??)  Memorial Day rears its (ugly? or reverent?) head near the end of the month, marking the death of my sister's husband, usually yipping the haunches of her birthday (never a happy month for her, ultimately).  But this year, I am determined to be joyful, dang it.
 
My beloved daughter is graduating from college this month -- in just a couple short weeks.  Thank goodness she is a very easy-going, "chill" young woman.  She doesn't have high expectations of big celebratory events!  (Thank you.)  She does want to be embraced by those who love her, though.  This is lovely.  She has accomplished wonderful things in her four brief years of college.  She travelled a good 325 miles away from her dying father to begin her college career.  She needed to do that.  She should have done that.  She did that with grace and sorrow and ... my love and encouragement.  She made the Dean's List that semester -- and every semester.  She is remarkable.  My daughter.  Our daughter.  Our beloved.
 
She didn't do all of this alone.  She had the loving support of two wonderful aunties and two grandparents within a hop, skip or a jump of her. How else could I have allowed her to go so far away?  She had the support of the congregation who baptized her; the college where she spent every summer coming to an intrinsic understanding of Jesus' Great Commission (the mission field).  She had the loving support of many saints who loved her ahead of her comings and goings.  That is a beautiful thing.  And she has been blessed by the loving education of her professors and administrators who know her by name -- and have encouraged and nurtured her these last four years.  And she has always had the undying love and support of her soul mate, her beloved brother.  I am so thankful for all of them.
 
However, again, she is on the cusp of travelling far from home -- far from me.  David and I took her to Italy, where our family experienced Holy Week right where St. Peter and St. Mark established the church.  A year later, I travelled with her to France.  Since then, she has travelled to South Africa for a semester of study and to the Galilee, where she performed research for undergraduate studies and experienced just a bit of what her father and grandparents had before her.  This summer she will return to the Middle East ... my little world traveler.  Where will winter take her?  I think I know...
 
Yet on this lovely spring evening in central Virginia -- having experienced a breezy, mild perfect spring day -- I ponder how far we have come.  I remember the day my daughter was born -- a Palm Sunday 22 years ago -- so full of life and readiness that has never faltered.  She made her debut with a curiosity and tenacity that has sustained her through her brief stint here in the Kingdom of Heaven thus far ... with either a crayon or a pen in her hand ... and I am excited to see where she will go.  I'm also a little nervous and a wee bit scared because I know where she's headed right away -- but I do trust in God to return her both safely and further enlightened -- ready for her next adventure.
 
Nonetheless, as for me?  Mayday!  Mayday!  Mayday!  Come help me!