Mother’s Day

On Sunday, the UK celebrated Mothering Sunday - a day that many people love, while others find it difficult. I have been on both sides of this; having lost my own mother at 15, I was motherless my entire adult life and felt no particular allegiance to this celebration. Having lost her so early, my mother who was my primary parent in the absence of a healthy father figure, I had been utterly broken for years as a teenager; but by the time I had reassembled the pieces and emerged into adulthood, the idea of having a mother was an abstraction to me. I distinctly remember feeling puzzled when a middle-aged tutor at my university expressed her grief at recently losing her mother… in my mind, as she was a full grown adult, it felt odd that she'd even still had a mother to begin with!

Now, having my own children, I find myself being celebrated on this day and this, too, feels odd. Mothering just is what I am, what I do; my purpose and calling in life now. Why does it feel odd, then, to be celebrated for this?

I think it’s because, what is mothering - is it not the work of creating and caring? Every woman is not a mother, but every woman is called ’to mother’ in some way: being made in God’s image and likeness, we create and we care. And that is not a calling reserved for women, either - all humans are made to create and to care. That is where our purpose lies, and whether or not we have children of our own, perhaps that is worth reflecting on today; where am I pouring my creativity and care? And as we do that, we live God’s purpose in our lives.

Two Christmases ago, our family met a man in our neighbourhood who has struggled with his health his entire life. He is younger than me, but has never been able to live independently or without pain since his teens; and in the November before we met, he had lost his last living relative, his grandmother. We invited him into our family Christmas, and into our family more generally - he has been part of our lives since then, and I have come to see him as a kind of ‘adopted uncle’ to my kids and a friend to Victor and me. He, however, has shown me this Mother’s Day that his perspective is somewhat different, and that has really touched my heart as it goes to show that we can ‘mother’ anyone, even if they’re not young enough to be our child! I’ll leave you with this poem he wrote on Sunday.

The Heart’s Own Choosing

They say that family is written in the cells,

A map of traits and legacy.

But I have learned that love is found

In the person who chooses to stay, and see.

Susanne, you didn’t give me your eyes,

Or the curve of a morning smile,

But you gave me the ground beneath my feet

And walked with me every mile.

You took the pieces of a life

And wove them into "home,"

Giving me a place to rest

So I’d never have to roam.

It isn't blood that makes a mother—

It’s the patience in your voice,

The way you loved me into being,

With a selfless, steady choice.

Today I celebrate the woman

Who claimed me as her own,

For the greatest seeds of kindness

Are the ones that you have sown.

Wherever you are in your life, whether you are a man or a woman, you can ‘mother’ in this way. Create. Love, Care. Be there. And most of all, perhaps - pray: because prayer does all these things.