Mother’s Day can be hard.
For me, this year at least, it’s because we are finally seeing light after a full 10 days of a virus coursing through our children’s bodies, causing our home to become a quarantine hospital and school, with me as the doctor and headmaster. I took two – yes, two – naps today. Eventually, I will recover. But maybe not before Mother’s Day.
Mother’s Day 2008 was harder. My work involved a camp that overlapped Mother’s Day, and one of our thoughtful male colleagues had bought flowers to give to each of the mothers who were spending their special day with university students instead of with their own children. It was so sweet, but my mind was already full of remembering my first little baby who had died from miscarriage just 5 months earlier. As he came around with the flowers, I was torn. I was a mother but had nothing to show for it, no child to hold.
Mother’s Day can be hard for a lot of other reasons as well, ones which are not so familiar to me but are well known to some of my dearest friends. Mothers and children are distanced from each other, either physically or relationally. Women long to have children, but that desire seems impossible to fulfill. Mothers have passed away, leaving so much wisdom untapped. Children have died, leaving an aching void in their mother’s hearts.
In our exhaustion, our loneliness, our wrestling, we thirst for a place where we can be honest about how we feel on a day like Mother’s Day. What I love about the Bible is that so many of its prayers, poems, and songs are incredibly raw, and the words resonate with those cries of our hearts that are difficult to speak aloud.
There is the story of Hannah, who was ridiculed and bullied because she was childless. 1 Samuel 1:10 records, “In her deep anguish Hannah prayed to the Lord, weeping bitterly.”
Then there is Psalm 13:
“How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?”
But the psalm ends with a change of tone so abrupt that it almost feels like whiplash.
“But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing the Lord’s praise,
for he has been good to me.”
How can the writer so confidently affirm his trust and joy, while still in the midst of sadness?
The answer is in the “salvation”. Isaiah 53 stirringly describes the agony and the beauty of the death of Jesus Christ that would actually take place hundreds of years after Isaiah’s writing. It explains that he took the punishment that we deserved because of the ways that we have rejected God and hurt other people, so that we could have forgiveness and peace when we trust in him. But the fullness of salvation doesn’t end there.
Verses 3-4 say, “He was despised and rejected by others, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering…” (highlights mine).
Luke records a time when Jesus stood up in a synagogue, read a portion of Isaiah 61:1-2, and claimed that he had fulfilled those words. These verses, along with verse 3, are helpful to our understanding of Jesus’ purpose. Here are some highlights.
“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted…
to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion-
to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes,
the oil of joy instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.”
You see, with Jesus Christ there is space to be vulnerable and real, because he intimately knows pain. But we can also expect healing and restoration of joy, because he took our pain for us so that we don’t have to carry it forever. Sometimes we hang on to our pain because we don’t know there is another option or because it has become familiar, but Jesus wants to comfort us, to bestow us with beauty, to anoint us with joy, to clothe us with a spirit of praise. And because he defeated death by rising to life, we know that he has the power to give us these things.
There I sat, on Mother’s Day 2008, in a room with many other mothers, unsure of whether I was worthy to take a flower. Thankfully, I had shared very openly with my team about my loss and heartache, so everyone knew what I was processing. They had given me space to be real. As my colleague came near with the flowers, I decided to reach out and grab one. Even as I was still grieving in that moment, I received a measure of healing from my community and from the Lord. And the healing process would continue.
Maybe for you, this Mother’s Day will be the day that you will take your flower, that you will begin to receive healing and joy. Maybe you will seek out someone who can give you a safe space to be honest but will also believe and pray with you for the healing that Jesus offers. Maybe you will spend time with the Lord alone, handing your pain to him and asking him to give you joy and praise in return. My hope is that you know from experience, this Mother’s Day, that you are deeply loved.
And just because I can’t do it for you… feel free to go out and buy yourself a flower.
A special note of thanks: Thank you to the women – great-grandmas, grandmas, aunts and great-aunts, babysitters, teachers, and friends – who have invested in the lives of my children. Your love and support of them is priceless. Thank you also to my dear friends who remind me to enjoy the gift that my parents are to me.
spahrknotes 