Mother’s Day is a day of beauty and flowers. We celebrate mothers with dinners, music, special gifts, bouquets, and church services. Sometimes it’s a holiday for the firsts. A first baby, a first grandbaby, a first day of celebration that you have engaged with new life and committed to raising it through to adulthood—and beyond.
Mother’s Day is also one of the most painful days for many women. Some will purposefully avoid Mother’s Day services this year. They will skirt by the individual handing out free carnations or roses to mothers. They will choose to read, watch a movie, go for a brisque hike, or do anything that keeps them busy. They will not want to remember Mother’s Day as it pertains to their own children because they have none.
Many women experience the pain and emptiness of infertility. It is real, and it is poignant. But my experience those first Mother’s Days wasn’t from infertility, but child loss that comes from what I have always called the “ghost grief.” It’s the loss of life when you have no grave to stand over, no funeral at which to mourn, and the world around you barely sees or recognizes that loss of a little one who never really was. It’s the “never really was” that makes this grief so palpable. The lack of recognition that, yes, I have lost a child. The Mother’s Day, when your arms hold the memory of who they were to be, you self-manage the piercing pain of packing away onesies and blankets and other symbols of being a mother, as real mothers arrange Mother’s Day bouquets on their dining room tables.
I think it’s typical for mothers who have miscarried to avoid Mother’s Day. Aside from celebrating my own mother, I was very content to hide in my house that day and pretend that I hadn’t grieved the loss of three children in the course of 18 months. That I didn’t walk down the hall at night to listen to the echoes of their cries that were tiny pieces of my dreams, never to be a reality. This was my experience until I discovered how healing Mother’s Day can be.
Celebration of Their Life
I decided to turn Mother’s Day into a different perspective for myself. Instead of hiding and even engaging in bitterness that I was not a mother, I shifted my thinking. Primarily because of a few people who, in their wisdom and sensitivity, realized my struggle. They reminded me that I was a mother. That I had carried my children for however long they’d securely lived within my womb. That Mother’s Day could be my day of celebration of their life! A day to remember them each year. To thank the Lord for the people they were to me, the precious little treasures, and to dream of the day we are reunited in eternity.
Mother’s Day was to become a day of bittersweet, yes, celebration. This was a day I could boldly walk up to the lady at church handing out carnations and say “yes” when they asked me if I was a mother.
Because I am.
Not was.
I am.
I am a mother of three.
Celebration of the Future
Mother’s Day became healing for me when I decided to make it into the beginning for me. The beginning of embracing grief. The beginning of holding onto the memories of my children with joy. The beginning of imagining the future when I would see them face to face. It’s a lovely thing to know that eternity awaits. It’s a blessed truth to come to the full realization that my children are right now—at this very moment—basking in the face-to-face presence of Jesus. This is a future I will share with them. They will give me a tour of Tomorrowland. They will introduce me to the saints. They will—I hope—be among the first to greet me when I arrive.
Mother’s Day is set apart for me to meditate and ponder on the hope of what is yet to come. In the same way I pondered their births, I ponder my own birth into a kingdom where they live. The moment we see each other for the first time is still coming. It is a moment that never went away. This is a true celebration. That I will see them.
I am a mother of three.
Celebration of Motherhood
That is what Mother’s Day is, after all. It is a celebration of that precious and most intimate gift which is being a mother. If you have lost a child or children through miscarriage, did you know you are a mother? That is a title that can never be stripped from you. Your heart mirrored the rhythm of your infant’s. Your soul, for however long, was linked to theirs in a way that will never be severed. Death does not have that power. A mother is someone who loves and nurtures, cherishes, and protects. Be it a child that skips around you on this Mother’s Day or a memory that sinks deep into your soul and warms you with the stinging joy of their absence and existence.
Celebrate Mother’s Day. You are a mother. You will always be a mother.
As I am.
I am a mother of three.
Years have passed since my three little ones ventured into the Kingdom of Heaven before me. Since then, they’ve been joined by other precious people, including their Nanny, who was so excited to be the first to see them. A grandmother’s heart ready to swoop into Heaven. I gave her the task of naming all three of them, so now I’m excited to hear their names for the first time too.
You see, death lost its sting because of Christ. The “sting” isn’t the grief accompanying the longing and the missing. The “sting” is the finality and severing that is death. The stripping of the title of “mother.” The robbing of the hope of tomorrow. That sting is gone. The future awaits.
I have two children now here with me. One is a teenager, and one is not far behind. Mother’s Day has taken on more than one form, and over the years, it has softened.
But every Mother’s Day at church, I still walk up to the lady handing out carnations.
“Are you a mother?” she asks.
“Yes,” I reply.
“Oh, how wonderful! How many children do you have?” She hands me a carnation to celebrate my motherhood.
“Five,” I reply.
Because I am. I am a mother. I am a mother of five.
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Jaime Jo Wright is an ECPA and Publisher’s Weekly bestselling author. Her novel “The House on Foster Hill” won the prestigious Christy Award and she continues to publish Gothic thrillers for the inspirational market. Jaime Jo resides in the woods of Wisconsin, lives in dreamland, exists in reality, and invites you to join her adventures at jaimewrightbooks.com and at her podcast madlitmusings.com where she discusses the deeper issues of story and faith with fellow authors.