Reflections On Mother’s Day

We have just finished observing Mother’s Day, a day designed to celebrate women who have raised children. It is the celebration of all the glories attached to womanhood.

For many, Mother’s Day is difficult. Some grieved the absence of a mother that they loss in the last year. Others have grieved children that they have miscarried or maybe even aborted. Some have grieved that they and their spouse who so desperately wanted to have children were unable to conceive. Others have birthed a child and have felt that they had no option but to put the child up for adoption. Some have lost a child.

The pain of Mother’s Day can leave many emotionally paralyzed. Somehow it sends them into some kind of time warp where they feel like they are looking through a cloudy window at those celebrating the joys of Motherhood and ultimately being a complete woman.

I too, am one of these women.

This article isn’t about the answer to this painful issue but it is more about the journey of the process of healing with Jesus. It’s about unraveling the issues of the heart. I am going to share my healing process this last week leading up to Mother’s Day and I hope that it will help you with your healing journey, no matter what burden it is that you carry.

I am 45 years old and I don’t remember a time in my life when I ever thought I wanted to have children. Specifically, I can remember being five years old and having great resolve that I was not going to have children. Why I felt this way I am not entirely sure. As a teenager, if the subject of having children someday ever came up I would say I wasn’t going to have children. I was guaranteed that any adult would be quick to say, “Oh, you will change your mind. You’ll see.” But somehow I knew that I wouldn’t, and I haven’t.

This has left me feeling like I am not normal. We are brought up in a world that says that the “greatest joy that exists, is to raise children and eventually see the fruition of grandchildren.”

I have had people over the years tell me that I would make such a wonderful mother but when I explain I have no desire to raise children it leaves them speechless. I always get a look of ghastly shock “Well . . . why not?” I explain that I just don’t have that desire and they say “But . . . children are so wonderful!” This leaves me with the impression that they think I am flawed.

I don’t know if I was born without the maternal instinct or if something happened to me that was so traumatic, I decided that I didn’t want to bring children into this world, but it has left me feeling broken. And frankly, I feel robbed. I feel I have been robbed of having the desire to want something that is so basic as having children and having what people see as a normal, valid life.

The week leading up to Mother’s Day this year, hit me like bomb. I cried on and off for days. It felt like the world was rubbing it in my face with Mother’s day coming, that I was not normal and I was alone. Who wants to be reminded that you are alone? And who wants to feel as if you don’t meet the standard?

The messages repeated themselves in my head, “You can’t be celebrated because you have not raised children. You are not a complete woman. You will never experience the greatest joy on earth because you have no children. You don’t really matter compared to these other women.”

All these statements came at me like birds diving in on their prey, causing me to crumble into a pile of tears. I walked around with this aching pain in my chest and some nights I would wake up in a deep despair.

I had a Christian Counselor for years that taught me the importance of sitting in the pain. This always leaves me with a vision of Job in the Bible.

“I have sewed sackcloth over my skin; And laid my head in the dust.”

Job 16:15 (NKJV)

I get this vision of Job wearing sackcloth and sitting in ashes broken before the Lord. Job just allowing all the pain in his heart to spill out. Job just sitting in the issues of his heart. I imagine that Job’s pain was so great that he probably couldn’t speak audible words, just some grunts.

If you have adapted the belief that you don’t want to be bothered by emotion or sit in the ashes with someone else while they unravel the issues of their heart, then this article isn’t for you.

No one likes to deal with pain but these times of unearthing your pain is really an invitation from Jesus to come and be broken before Him. This process requires a lot of time. To some it may seem ridiculous to dwell on your pain too long. There is this idea that, you just can’t sit around wallow in what seems to be your self-pity. Right? You aren’t a pig in the slop enjoying a good roll.

I am not saying to stop living your life, but I am saying make room for you to be broken before Jesus. How that time is made would look different for each person.

So, I made room to sit in the ashes and allow Jesus to help me unravel my heart issues. And to be honest it seemed that I spent a lot of time spilling out my pain and not feeling that I was really getting an answer from the Lord. Which will cause you to spill out more because “Lord! Why will you not answer me!”

But after about 7 days a beautiful thing happened. My neighbor Jan, sent me a text message Sunday evening on Mother’s Day. She thanked me for a card and gift that I had left for her because she is a Mother of three children and Grandmother to nine Grandchildren. Then she wrote,

“I’ve been thinking about you today too and wonder what kind of thoughts you have on this particular day?“

I have had a horrible week. I spent much of it crying. Mother’s Day kinda points out to those of us without children that we are not normal and it has made me feel very alone.

“Ohhh. I’m really sorry you’ve been feeling sad. The whole subject of motherhood is large in the panorama of life, and I can understand that you think about it.

But, nurturing, mothering, & loving takes many forms, & I think you live your whole life nurturing.

You’ve learned so many ways to love yourself, & to cherish the people & elements in your life.

You don’t have to bear a child to be a mother.

And you mustn’t think of yourself as being “not normal”!

When I got married, I felt like I’d joined the sisterhood of women in the world who are married, that I’d become linked into humanity. I didn’t know I would experience that feeling & was sort of surprised by it, but I liked it. I liked being part of the chain.

I guess I knew I wanted to have children, but I was mostly aware that, internally, I wanted to replicate the life I knew and grew up in, but had no actual vision as to how it might look.

Then, my first two pregnancies ended in miscarriages and I was bereft because once the first two don’t work, you don’t know if any ever will.

But number three took, and then two more children.

You mustn’t feel like there’s something amiss about you. You are entitled to all the goodness and health that life has to offer.

You’re as “normal” as you need to be and you are a good person.

I was left with tears in my eyes. Through my neighbor Jan, Jesus showed up. Her words changed how I felt about Mother’s Day. It brought me healing. Her words gave me permission to celebrate me on Mother’s Day because of all the people I have nurtured and cared for. I no longer felt excluded from the celebration of womanhood.

Sometimes when we are sitting in the ashes with Jesus spilling out all the pain our heart can hold, He is quiet. He is listening and when He thinks you have talked enough and gotten it all out, then He speaks.

Because I spent the time sitting in my pain I now have gained wisdom and have something to offer someone else who is going through the same kind of pain.

If you feel that all that emotion is a lot of nonsense then you will probably miss the miracle and the teaching that Jesus has to offer you. Stuffing your emotions doesn’t bring transformation. Jesus can only give to those who are willing to walk through the transformation process.

I have another neighbor, Pauline, who is 94 years old. I often take her food I cook. She is always so thrilled. On Mother’s Day I had taken her a gift and some potato salad I made earlier in the day.

Monday night there was a knock at the door, it was Pauline. “Lorraine would you do me a favor? If I bring you some eggs tomorrow would you make me some more of that potato salad? It was so, so good and when I finished what you gave me I wished I had some more.” I told her, “Yes I would.”

I smiled to myself. She was just like a child asking her mother to make her her favorite food. I knew in that moment that Jesus was saying “She needs to be nurtured and she needs you.”

So, I am using that mothering, nurturing gift that the Lord has given me. Nurturing life is what womanhood is all about.

I need to go now. I think Pauline is at the door.

Photo designed and taken by Lorraine