Would it be inappropriate to entitle this post, Mother’s Day….BLECH?
I’m just not feeling it.
Don’t get me wrong, the idea of honoring motherhood is a beautiful concept. But, we should honor our mothers everyday. Can I be honest and say that I’m a little weary of the special “days” we set aside for honoring important people in our lives? It is good to spread awareness, to say…”this matters”. The problem, however, lies in the expectations we place on such special days.
We do it at Christmas, birthdays, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day…all those days.
It is a special day. It should be perfect. At Christmas, there should be family and warm feelings filling our homes and our hearts. We must cook a certain favorite dish. It must turn out just right. After all, it’s Christmas. Everything must hold to a certain standard….the decorations, the family Christmas picture. Oh the picture! Nothing can mess that up! And, on Mother’s Day, we should be showered with love and gifts. We shouldn’t have to cook. We should be taken care of and everyone should be on their very best behavior. It’s Mother’s Day after all!
When none of it goes as planned, when we behave just like the broken messes we are, and life looks like the broken mess it is every other day, we are disappointed. Feelings are hurt. Instead of feeling loved and honored, we lament over our unmet expectations. Expectations most assuredly make the top ten list of the most dangerous and destructive things to any relationship. They cause us to act the opposite of what love looks like. (If you are unsure what love should look like, please read I Corinthians 13.)
You want to know what my mom used to say in those moments when our expectations weren’t meant and nothing turned out as planned? She would smile and say, “We’re making a memory.” The best memories came, not from days that turned out perfect, but the ones that made us laugh. The times when the leaky pup tent we crammed our family in slid down the muddy hill in the rain. She always made the best lemonade from the lemons of this life. And, believe me, that woman received more lemons from life than most.
If I can be real, since my mother died five years ago, Mother’s Day has lost it’s luster. Mother’s Day and my birthday have been the days when I dread her absence the most, since she made her home in heaven. I am not one that advocates wallowing in grief, wearing it like a “Woe is me” badge of honor. No. I think you should keep dancing, and living, with freedom and grace. We do not grieve as those with no hope. We are filled with the hope and promise of heaven. But the anticipation of those two days leave me with a heaviness that makes me just want to rebel against the status quo….the expectations. I love the little things the boys/men in this house do to make those days special, and I’m grateful for their acts of love. I won’t lie, of course I would be hurt and disappointed if they ignored Mother’s Day or my birthday. I am a woman with a beating heart, living in the United States of America in the year 2012, after all. But, the truth is, inside, I dread those days a bit. I recoil at the sentimental commercials. Blech.
When asked what you’re doing for Mother’s Day, a part of me wants to answer, “hiding in my bed under the covers until it’s over”. I won’t, of course. I wouldn’t do that to the people I love. I will go to church, and smile. I will accept the flowers the church gives out in honor of Mothers and the Right to Life organization, with gratefulness. Who doesn’t like to get flowers? I will hang out with my boys and Tim, eating the Legion chicken barbecue. And, hopefully, no one will notice that I’m a little mad that Mother’s Day has come again, and she isn’t here. I could search the entire earth, and not find my mother to give her the obligatory, sappy card. This year, if I can be so real, you may wonder if I have any business in ministry. As I’m facing so many goodbyes…so many endings to the chapters of motherhood in my own life, as well as her continued screaming absence from every special day, I want to rebel against all of the expectations. I want to run, like Forrest Gump, without stopping. Just run. Or maybe get the back of a motorcycle with my husband, and take off. Some days, I’m tired of the face we put on that says everything is just fine. If I’m honest, most days I’m tired of that face. And, I’m starting to refuse to hide behind it.
It is good to celebrate mothers, and I will do it, as I encourage you to, as well. But, I also will think of the little boys in the classroom who may not see their mothers, or some children I know who will wake up in the same stinky, hopeless mess they do each day, or the children torn because they aren’t sure which mother to give the gift they made in school to, or the ones, like me, whose mothers are in heaven, nowhere to be found on planet Earth. Also tugging heavily at our hearts are the mothers who ache to hold their children. Mother’s Day, another reminder of what they’ve lost, a dream unfulfilled, a prayer answered but not the way they hoped, a heart-broken and filled with longing. Mothers who long to receive the homemade card with the words “I Love You, Mom” scrawled in five-year-old handwriting.
Everyday, we should celebrate the people we love. We should feel every ounce of joy when we can, and we don’t need a label to do it. And, when we feel like running or wallowing, perhaps we can reach out to those around us, carrying their own broken places. We cannot escape the brokenness of this world. I cannot run far enough to escape the brokenness, the goodbyes, or the missing. And, neither can you. But, maybe if we sit together in it for a while, it will feel a little less lonely. Who knows, maybe we can even make some lemonade and laugh in the middle of it all. I’m pretty sure that’s what my mom and Dinah would do, and it sounds like a good plan.
So, this Mother’s Day, I’ll be lifting my glass of lemonade to all moms out there, in every state of brokenness we find ourselves in. Know you are loved, appreciated, you matter, and you are not alone.
