When Mother's Day Is Hard - ELIZABETH LAING THOMPSON

Mother’s Day is a beautiful concept: Let’s honor the women we admire! Let’s love up on our mothers and grandmothers and aunts and mother-figures and mama friends—yay, moms! Mother’s Day sounds so simple, but for many of us, it’s not. It’s… complicated. It’s a day all atangle with confusing feelings of disappointment, heartache, loneliness, loss, and even regret.

Mother’s Day can be difficult for a million reasons:

   Maybe your mom, or a woman you love, has passed.
Maybe your relationship with your mother is strained or nonexistent.
   Maybe you long to be a mother, but you can’t get pregnant, or you’ve suffered a miscarriage. All you can think about is the baby you should be holding.
   Or maybe you have the blessing of little ones, and you wish motherhood was all sticky-fingered hugs and smiles and cuteness, but right now it’s mostly messy and exhausting and overwhelming (and that makes you feel guilty).
Maybe you secretly long to feel loved and valued by your family, to know they appreciate all your sacrifices—but instead you feel overworked and overlooked.
   Maybe your relationship with your children is difficult or distant, and Mother’s Day only highlights how much you wish things were different.

The list of difficult feelings could go on. I’ve walked through several painful Mother’s Days: the years we lost my grandmothers, the years we couldn’t get pregnant, the year we’d lost a pregnancy, and now my parents and family are suffering as my father’s memory fades.

If you already know this Mother’s Day is going to be difficult for you, I encourage you not to just grit your teeth and muscle through the weekend. Please begin taking care of your heart by taking your feelings to God in prayer. These words in 1 Peter remind us that we can take all our anxieties—and any feelings—to God: “Cast all your anxieties on him because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7). If it matters to you, it matters to God. He wants to hear about it. Share your sorrows with God, asking him to find ways to soften your pain this weekend, then keep an eye out for the ways he shows up to comfort you. If you pay attention, I bet you’ll experience quiet moments of kindness or encouragement when God whispers, “I’m here and I see you. You’re not alone.”

And my friend, I encourage you to find at least one person you can open up to: a friend, a family member, a spouse, a therapist. Tell them why your heart is heavy, and ask them to pray for you and check on you this weekend. I know this is hard. I don’t always want to be vulnerable and share my sorrows with people—maybe I don’t want to be selfish or draw attention to myself when I feel like I “should” be joyful, or maybe I don’t want to burden others with my pain, or maybe I just don’t want to talk about a hard thing—but I always feel better when I push through and share my feelings. The burden feels lighter, like maybe I can carry it after all, now that I’m not carrying it alone.

If you have friends or loved ones who may find Mother’s Day difficult, here are a few ways you can support them:

* Simply acknowledge their pain. Make a call, write a card, send a text… You don’t have to be eloquent—just say something simple like, “I know this day may be hard for you, and you’ll be in my prayers. I’m here if you need to talk.” Don’t underestimate the power of a small gesture. Your words won’t take away their hurt, but they may soften it a little.
* Send a friend a digital gift card so they can splurge on their favorite cup of coffee. (You know I am a huge believer in the healing power of coffee. Even if the healing is only temporary. ;-))
* Send flowers to a woman you know is lonely or hurting.
* Express admiration to your mom friends who may be feeling a bit tired or unappreciated in their mothering. What a gift it is to feel seen by your friends!
* Ask your pastor to consider setting up a table at your Mother’s Day service where people can pause to pray. Every Mother’s Day, our church lights a candle in honor of the loved ones we have lost and the heartaches we carry, and we place it on a table. All throughout the fellowship, people stop by that table. They may take a private moment to remember a loved one or a lost pregnancy, or to say a prayer for themselves or for someone else who is hurting. It’s a simple thing, but it allows meaningful space for grief and remembrance for those who need it.

This Mother’s Day, here are a few scriptures to read on your own or share with a friend who may be hurting.

If you’re grieving…

The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them;
he delivers them from all their troubles.
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted
and saves those who are crushed in spirit. (Psalm 34:17-18)

If you are estranged from your mother…

“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!
See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;
your walls are ever before me.” (Isaiah 49:15-16)

If mothering is hard…

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)

If you need hope while you’re waiting…

I remember my affliction and my wandering,
the bitterness and the gall.
I well remember them,
and my soul is downcast within me.
Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.”
The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him. (Lamentations 3:19-25)

If you need to feel seen, loved, and appreciated by God this weekend, take comfort from the beautiful words of Psalm 37. Not only does he direct your steps and pick you up when you fall, he delights in you. Imperfect as we are, our Father still sees the best of who we are—the people we are striving to be—and we make him happy and proud:

The Lord directs the steps of the godly.
He delights in every detail of their lives.
Though they stumble, they will never fall,
for the Lord holds them by the hand. (Psalm 37:23-34 NLT)

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