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.
