I am reviving my long-dormant blog to post this brief commentary that I gave at church this morning in honor of Mother's Day. Lots of shout-outs in here to some very special women (not identified by name, but you know who you are).
*** Good morning, and Happy Mother’s Day. It’s such an honor to have this opportunity to talk to you about what this day means to me. I’ve had a great day so far: my husband made me breakfast, and my children made me cards. We sent cards to my mom and my mother-in-law, who are both wonderfully loving and caring, and have always set a fine example for me of all that a mother should be. So this morning, my heart is full. Motherhood has been a tremendous, life-changing blessing for me.
And yet, Mother’s Day is not quite that simple. For many of us, this day evokes complicated feelings. I am also thinking of a friend whose beloved mother is battling cancer, and of another who struggled with infertility for a long time. I’m thinking of several friends who have lost children before they had a chance to grow up. I’m thinking about my friend who is a single mother, raising her little boy on her own, who probably had to make her own breakfast this morning. Then, there are the children whose mothers - my friends - have passed away, and how much they are missing their moms.
So, to me Mother’s Day is complicated, perhaps especially because I view it through the lens of my faith. As a Christian, I believe that we are all called to demonstrate selfless love throughout our lives, and my experience of motherhood has been a crash course in that department. I often reflect not only on the sacrifice that Christ made for us, and how patiently he taught us the ways of love, but also of his mother, and the exquisite joy and pain she experienced. My faith has given me strength, courage, and inspiration along this wonderful, yet challenging, journey of motherhood.
But Christianity also calls us to greater compassion. And so, even as I want to celebrate all of the goodness and beauty and joy that comes from motherhood, and praise mothers for their steadfast, unconditional love, I am also very aware of those who are suffering today, and thinking about the many ways that all Christians are called to show motherly love to each other.
I’m reminded of a quote from one of my favorite authors and bloggers, Glennon Melton: “There’s no such thing as other people’s children.” She and several other authors have formed the Compassion Collective, and they are working fervently to help with the refugee crisis in Europe, literally saving children’s lives every day. In a sense, they are extending a motherly love to strangers on another continent, trying to feed them, clothe them, shelter them, heal them. Similarly, there are countless women like my youngest sister, a school counselor, who care for children all day long, shouldering those burdens after they leave work, even though they have no children of their own.
I suspect that Mother’s Day is such an intensely emotional day for us because it is essentially about that which matters most to us humans: love. It is about the profound love that is shared between a mother and child, or the aching that comes from losing that bond. It hits us at our most tender spot, and shines the spotlight on one of the most significant and influential relationships in our lives.
But just as our Christian faith encompasses the boundless joy of God’s unconditional love along with the pain of Christ’s suffering, so too does Mother’s Day encompass the heights of love and the depths of loss. We can hold all of these feelings together in our hands without diminishing any of them: they coexist, today and always.
I want to finish by sincerely wishing a Happy Mother’s Day to all of the moms who are here today -- you deserve to be spoiled! And to those who are hurting today, I also want to extend an empathetic hug to you -- because you deserve compassion. And to all of us, I say: let’s celebrate Mother’s Day by pouring our love out on the world -- because the world needs it.
