Good morning…
Her mom was a beloved teacher at the elementary school. Bright. Sunny. A breath of joy. She, I remember, was a vibrant young woman when her mother died, a loving daughter who was schooled daily by one of the best lovers of life ever to walk this earth.
“To all the daughters who’ve lost their mothers,” she wrote on Facebook yesterday, “to all the mothers who’ve lost a child, to the women wishing desperately to be mothers, to those with a mother who is dying or who is no longer the person she used to be, to those with mothers who abused or neglected them, to those who made the choice not to become a mother, to all those for whom this weekend is complicated: I see you, and I hold you tight in my heart.”
Sent to me this morning, her words touch the raw emotions from one of my hardest seasons in life. During our four years of infertility, Mother’s Day was the absolute hardest day for me every year (set alongside the monthly negative pregnancy tests and the four unforgettable days my body miscarried newly forming babies). Though my husband was an associate pastor at our church, I found it so hard to go to worship on Mother’s Day morning. I hated being publicly reminded that I simply could not produce the deeply desired admission ticket needed to enter the amusement park of parenthood.
Many of you loved our post from yesterday, a post highlighting the kind Mother’s Day gift handmade and mailed by my own bright, sunny, joyful mom. Yet, also I know that for many of you my mother’s loving expression sat squarely on a sore, sensitive nerve. With this mourning after Mother’s Day, some of you might wake still asking, “God, why me?”
Why my mom’s early death? (And with this Covid crisis, many will add, “Why could I not be with her when she passed from earth to heaven?”) Why the loss of my child? Why can’t I become a mother? Why is my mom dying, a nearly unrecognizable shell of the person she used to be? Why the abuse, the neglect? Why the alcoholism, the mental illness, the painful embarrassment? Why does this world focus so much on having children when being a mother is not my desire? Why did I not receive the full circle motherly love of which other people’s Facebook lives seem so fruitfully filled full?
For all of you who have just endured a complicated holiday weekend, I too sense your pain and am honored to hold you in the palm of my prayers.
To you I call, O Lord, My rock, do not be deaf to me, for if You are silent to me, I will become like those who go down to the pit (grave) (Psalm 28:1, AMP).
…Sue…
P.S. Thanks to Anne Cox who sent me Ellen Ray’s beautiful Facebook post.
