Mother's Day Reflections

I have a confession.  I am a Mother’s Day Grinch.  I just don’t like the day. There are times when I have actively hated the day.  As a child I guess I liked it well enough.  I always made a card for my Mom; usually funny, since I didn’t do sappy very well. But then every year was the pressure to outdo the previous year.   And that card became tremendously difficult to make the year that my mother lost one of her children – my youngest sister – to chicken pox. I think that happened about a month before Mother’s Day.

In my teens and as I moved into young adulthood, I really loved children and wanted children of my own quite fervently.  However, I had no boyfriend, I didn’t date and I thought myself unlikely to ever get married and have a family.  So I grieved inwardly on Mother’s Day for the children I (thought) I would never have.

Lo and behold, I did marry (the bestest guy ever, btw) and we wanted children.  But, it appeared that I was infertile and treatments for several years did not help. So the grief on Mother’s Day became stronger. I would sit through Mother’s Day at church with tears silently running down my cheeks.

As it happened, I did finally become pregnant and had a child – actually I wound up with three delightful children. Now you might say that the moral to this story is to trust God and not borrow trouble and certainly I have learned that over the years.  But I have never forgotten the grief that I felt on Mother’s Day.

In more recent time, there have been several years where my relationship with my own mother was strained and that, too, contributed to a Mother’s Day experience that was less than happy.

So, yes, I am a Mother’s Day Grinch.

As a pastor, of course, I had a chance to do things my way (sort of), so while I realized that failing to celebrate Mother’s Day would probably anger my congregations, I did make some stipulations.  I would not ask those questions:

            Who is the newest mother here? (Causing grief for those who had miscarriages in the past year.

            Who has the most children? (What about those who would love children but can’t have them?)

            Who has been a mother for the longest? (As those who have lost their mothers in the past year cry to themselves)

I would insist that if we gave a gift to “Mothers” then we would give that gift to all women in the congregation and I would explain why in the spiel that I developed that always goes something like this:

Today is Mother’s Day. This is a great day for some, but for others it is a day of pain and mourning.  Some of you are grieving for mothers that have died; some of you are grieving for children that have died or for those you were not able to have. Some of you have children who have broken your heart and others of you have mothers who have cast you out or abused you. So today, we will honor those who gave us birth, at least those who deserve such honor.  But we will also honor those who are the “mothers” of the commandment in Exodus. When God commands that we honor our mothers, the Hebrew word refers to not only our biological mothers but all those women who nurtured us, taught us, challenged us lovingly, and mentored us.  Every woman here today gets a flower, both to honor the mothering that you do and to remind you that all of you have the opportunity to be a mother.  You can choose motherhood in the biblical tradition.  You can choose to be important to someone, whether a child or an adult, who needs you.  If you are grieving today, I pray that God will soothe your heart. But I also urge you to give your grief to God as an offering and let God lead you into the motherhood of the kingdom.

On Mother’s Day, I think about all the mothers in my life: Kelso, an older lady who was my first babysitter. Annie May and Wilma, black women who cleaned my room, washed my clothes, stayed with me when my Mother was busy or gone. I remember my teachers – Mrs. Parsons who encouraged my love of science; Tezzie Cox who pushed me to stand in front of my peers and preside at Tuesday afternoon assemblies in high school; Madame Shaner who showed me what it meant to live with dignity and die with grace. I remember those older women (I called them all “Aunt” whether they were related or not) Aunt Helen and Aunt Susan in particular who cared for me in various ways and listened to me at times when others weren’t interested in my dreams. Some of these women had given birth to their own children, but all of them had children that they nurtured, that they mothered.

I don’t know that I will ever enjoy Mother’s Day.  My own children honor me with their lives and their love throughout the year, and I would rather that be the case than have one day of hoopla.  I am happy for those who can celebrate, but I don’t think I will ever forget the pain, or stop seeing the pain that others feel on this day.