Happy Mother’s Day! Really?

Many places around the globe remember and honor mothers this month. Naturally, it’s big business vying for more sales as the media remind the public to show one’s appreciation to mothers. Mothers are honored in churches (including Adventist churches). Mothers are lauded by politicians and leaders.

But Mother’s Day can also be a difficult time. There are women who have always wanted to be mothers and yet have never been able to have that deep yearning met. For some Mother’s Day is an unwanted reminder of a stillbirth or an adoption. As the media are saturated with pictures of happy mothers receiving flowers and gifts from grateful children, many mothers wonder what they did wrong and why their children never express love and gratitude. Many hardworking fathers wonder why so much is made of Mother’s Day, yet Father’s Day seems often so underwhelming in society in general. No matter who we are, whether or not we are parents, Mother’s Day touches a nerve, calling us each back to our own beginning, our own questions about being loved and accepted.

Yet love is wired into our genes. We began through love. For some of us our parents loved each other before we were born. Some of us may have been unplanned or even unwanted by our mothers. But despite how each of our individual stories began, someone carried us for nine months. For those nine months, as genetic codes were being read and cells were dividing, we were being “woven together” in response to God’s plan. God, who is both the source of life and love (1 John 4:8), was individually creating someone more to love (Isa. 44:2). And the best part of it all is that we had nothing to do with it. We didn’t ask for it. We didn’t work for the gift of life. We just listened to the throb of it with our mother’s heartbeat, then we simply opened ourselves to life with our first deep breath.

Somewhere, somehow each of us has seen love modeled in this gift of life. Despite all the odds against us we were born. We are all as unique as our fingerprints, and are designed to share a special relationship with the God who knows even the number of hairs on our heads (Matt. 10:30).

Some of us go on to replay and participate in God’s love story as we carry a new life within us. As mothers we get to share our bodies, our blood supply, our hormones, our food, and the very air we breathe with God’s new love project. We understand that in this fallen world, love is expressed not only in flowers, sweetly worded cards, and beautiful gifts, but in birth pains, sleepless nights, runny noses, tears, and dirty diapers. Regardless of whether we are mothers or just their grown-up children, Mother’s Day should be a great reminder that we are loved!

“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!” (Isa. 49:15, NIV).