Loving Mom on Mother's Day

Mother’s Day is fast approaching and as a society I think we all need to step back and just take a breath for a second…

inhale…

exhale…

ok, let’s go.

As we leap into this holiday filled with breakfast-in-bed and handmade glitter cards, let’s remember that there are many, many women who deserve honor on this holiday. A local shop is running a sale, 20% off if you show your baby bump and when I saw the ad, reality hit me. It seems as though we still believe that motherhood is only bestowed on the ones lucky enough to carry a child… let’s evolve past this definition, please, pretty please?!

As a biological mom and a foster mom I can assure you…there is no difference in my motherhood between the two. I know a lot of moms who have earned that title in many different ways. Regardless of how you got the title, you deserve to be honored, cherished, loved.

Let’s go one step farther and talk about something hard…something that is a reality in my life. Honoring the mothers who had to make really hard decisions or had hard decisions made for them. Maybe it was to give their child up for adoption, maybe it was coming to terms with the fact that they were going to loose their kids because they could not keep them safe. Perhaps we are talking about teen moms. Society says…you are less than because you aren’t good enough. I say, “Thank you for bringing life into this world, when you didn’t have to.” “Thank you for being brave and giving your child their best chance.”

My heart hurts for children born into circumstances they did not create, but my heart completely breaks for those children who didn’t even have a chance to rise above the cards they were dealt.

This Mother’s Day, let us be so grateful for the women in our life. The mom’s who gave us life, the mom’s who raised us, the mom’s who mentored us. Let us thank God for the mom’s still with us and let’s have compassion for those who spend the day missing theirs.

Please, let’s not forget the mom’s who don’t have their children, whether it was by infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, death, adoption or by force. It’s not our place to condemn them, it’s our place to love them and tell them they are still worthy of honor. Perhaps if we start lifting each other up (and I’m not talking just about your friends, I’m talking about the least of these), we will make motherhood more than just a mommy competition. We will learn how to help each others and in turn we will raise a generation that values life and lives it to the fullest.

Ending abortion, promoting healthy families and relationships, making sure children are safe and loved, these are all noble goals, but how on earth can we accomplish these things without putting aside our judgement and getting our hands dirty.

This Mother’s Day, I challenge you to really consider where your heart is in taking care of God’s daughters, can you get involved in changing how society looks at mothers? Can you love a mom who has made mistakes, who has faced heart-break, who has lost every child they loved? I bet you can.

And to the mother of my foster son: Thank you for giving him life when you didn’t have to, that was an act of love and I will always consider you brave because of it.