Others' Day

This weekend we rightly celebrate mothers.  And while we are celebrating actual individual people, what we are celebrating is their personification of traits we admire and benefit from.  Traits like sacrificial love, tender nurture, and unwavering commitment.  If we have mothers in our lives who embody these characteristics, we are blessed, and so it is fitting that we give honor to those people on Mother's Day.  And if you are one of those mothers, it is fitting that you receive honor this weekend, and I hope you are able to fully accept it and enjoy it.

For some, though, Mother's Day is tinged with sadness.  Some have lost a child; they will always be a mother to that child, but are no longer able to mother that child.  Some are trying to become a mother, whether biologically or through adoption, and have been unable.  Some have not yet found someone to be a mother with.  The celebration of motherhood is, for some, a reminder of their own loss or void.

There is nothing that can be said that will serve as a suitable salve for such wounds.  They are real and they are deep.  But, in celebrating mothers this weekend, I hope we will not forget to include and honor those who hurt to be mothers. 

The God of the Bible is usually described in masculine terms, but He also manifests those traits we appreciate about mothers and motherhood: sacrificial love, tender nurture, and unwavering commitment.  Those who hurt to be mothers hurt precisely because theirs is a deep desire to also manifest sacrificial love, tender nurture, and unwavering commitment.  It would not hurt as much if it were not true. 

And so the pain is real and hard to overcome.  But it is also an indication of something wonderful, something admirable, something godly, that stirs from deep within.  And I hope that, too, is honored and appreciated and accepted this weekend.  Because it deserves to be so.