Tags
care, complicated, grace, gratitude, Jesus, love, mother, Mother's Day, mothering, pain, pastor, sorrow, suffering, tension
One of the deepest privileges of being a pastor is being gifted with people’s stories. Sometimes those are stories of great joy: of new love leading to marriage, of the gift of children, of the excitement of a new vocation. And sometimes those are stories of deep pain and grief: of life lost, of hurts deeply experienced, of dreams deflated. The sum of those stories is uncountable – they are words and emotions that drift in and out of the pastor’s consciousness – the vessel for all that needs to be said and released. It means that even in the pastor’s moments of greatest joys, there is, at the subconscious level, the treasuring and honoring of deepest pain and suffering.
Normally, I find I am able to hold that reality with tenderness and grace. But nothing challenges that ability more than holidays that desire to create a forced, well-intentioned experience. Secular ones, like the approaching Mother’s Day this weekend, are the worst offenders. On the surface there is nothing wrong with Mother’s Day. I know countless people who have been tremendous mothers in my life and in the lives of others, who rarely get a thank you, let alone a day of honor. There is nothing wrong with honoring the mothers in our lives. The challenge is the sea of complicated feelings that come along with such an effort: the grief over mothers we have lost, the suffering caused by mothers who were abusive or absent, the pain of those women who wanted to be a mother and never could or who were mothers and who lost their pregnancies or their children, and for the hurt of those relationships between children and mothers that is estranged. Our much-deserved celebration of mothering is always tainted with the very messy reality of mothering.
For that reason, you will not find me liturgically celebrating Mother’s Day at church. Instead, I invite you to put on your pastor shoes this Mother’s Day and hold in tension the beloved and the painful this day. Reach out to friends who have struggled with infertility, lost a pregnancy, or grieve the loss of a child or a relationship with their child. Reach out to those who had beautiful, healthy relationships with their mothers and now grieve their death every day. Reach out to those who are mothering figures in your life, even if they never birthed you and give them thanks. At our church, we quietly offer resources for the complicated nature of the day. You can find them here, here, and here. But whatever you do, use this Mother’s Day to “mother in” the love of Jesus, who could see mothers everywhere and honored all of them.
Seeking and Serving 