I love motherhood. In fact, I love motherhood so much that if there’s any one thing in the whole wide world that I most regret being unable ever to do, it’s to have the experience of personally giving life to another human being. When God gave gifts, He absolutely gave the best one to women. But it’s precisely because motherhood is so precious that Mother’s Day can be so painful for many people.
A good friend of mine who wants nothing more dearly than to be a mom recently announced her first pregnancy to me, only to tell me a week later that she had suffered a miscarriage. I can’t even imagine the hell this Sunday might be for her.
My own mother died of breast cancer 10 years ago, and if anything pained her in that process, it was losing the chance to know and be a grandmother to my children. Every year for Mother’s Day, I feel the emptiness of her not being here, grief made all the worse by her birthday sometimes actually coinciding with it.
Last night, a woman called my show to say she dreamed of a dozen children growing up but has had none with her two marriages and divorces. Then she paid me the ultimate compliment when she said this is why she hates Mother’s Day and stays home every year. I realized that perhaps for the very first time in her life, she felt safe enough in a Christian community to express this honest pain and receive consolation for it rather than condemnation. How long has she suffered silently, knowing that other Christians don’t want to hear such things?
Women who have no children.
Women who have lost children.
Women whose husbands refuse to let them have children or men whose wives do the same.
Women who are so frustrated with their families that they may even wish they weren’t mothers at all.
Children who have lost mothers.
And children whose mothers were not wonderful.
On this day of great celebration and honor, there is a terrible danger and a wonderful opportunity to remember these suffering souls and to remind them how much we and Jesus love them, a love that might just redeem an otherwise awful day.
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