I’ve kept all the cards — the handwriting and spelling telling me what child and their age before I even turn it over to see the date.
I’ve kept the art project gifts — the paper mache flowers, the popsicle stick bouquet.
They live in a corner of my office where I can glance over and see them, a smile coming to my face in the midst of a hard day at work. As I look at them, I also can say a short prayer of gratitude for my Mom in Denver and the gift she has been, and continues to be in my life. But, from the safety of my home office, I can also selectively choose to remember a woman on the other side of the world who held me in her womb for 9 months, and made the decision I might never understand, to say “yes” to adoption.
Once a year, the calendar dictates this Sunday in May we call “Mother’s Day.” And while the stores fill with gifts and sentiments of gratitude and appreciation for mothers, I long for a day when the church chooses to not follow suit. Because for every mother who is being celebrated, there’s another who is deep in grief. For every mother at a family brunch, there’s another who sits alone, trying to avoid the triggers outside. For every new mother, there’s another who has lost. And like me, for every biological mother, there’s a trio of women who dance a complex tango within a story of adoption.
The well-intentioned church has sought to honor mothers on this day through shout outs and standing applause, flowers, and special coffee hours. You as a reader might have done, or are planning to do something similar to this on Sunday. After all, we should celebrate and honor the vocational role of parenting. Where, if not in the church, should we enthusiastically support the work of Psalm 145, commending God’s work to the next generation?
For a moment today, I invite you to close your eyes and picture your pews. Beyond the faces you see, what are their stories of parenting and motherhood? Do you see pain and loss? Grief? Estrangement? Shame? Exhaustion? Think critically if your sanctuary is a safe place for them to hold these tender and traumatic pieces of their lives. Examine with honesty if the way you recognize Mother’s Day in worship will honor them, or make them wish they had simply stayed home. Contemplate if it’s best to say nothing at all. What people do after the service is not on you. But the sacred trust of planning and leading worship/preaching is. So…
- What if, instead of a moment of applause, we all offered a moment of truth?
- What if this day became less about recognition from the front, and more about intercession from the whole body?
- What if we trusted that the most faithful thing we could offer is not a celebration, but an honest prayer?
If you’re looking for such a resource (Sunday is coming!), here’s one I wrote that is meant to be adaptable to your church and congregation. You can change the wording to “mothering” instead of “parenting”, but it’s also ok to use this day to pray more generically. Use it again on Father’s Day!
As Nicholas Wolterstorff reminds us in Acting Liturgically, your congregation arrives to worship and “submits” to the liturgy that has been prepared for them. It’s a sacred trust. Guard that trust well.
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Loving God,
On this day we bless you and give you thanks for parents. With gratitude we remember that parents come to us in many different ways: Grandparents, aunties and uncles who are parent figures, godparents, parents by birth, parents by marriage, parents through adoption, spiritual parents within our church community.
Bless these parents and the work of their hands. May they know each and every day that their labor is not in vain.
We thank you that each of us has a parental role to play in the lives of those around us. For you call each of us to love and care for another, watch over those who are young, disciple and walk with people of all ages. Renew our calling today to parent: whether biologically or spiritually, the young or the old, the day-to-day or from far away.
Loving God, we also recognize that the work of parenting is complex and oftentimes painful. It takes us from one emotional extreme to another – from tremendous joy and happiness, to deep pain and paralyzing fear. We lament the hardship of parenting and the many ways it wounds us deeply. We pray for those among us for whom days like this reopen those wounds. We offer up our prayers and ask that you be close to the brokenhearted today.
We pray for those who have lost a child of any age.
We pray for those who have lost a parent either through physical death, or the slow death of dementia.
We pray for those who long to be parents.
We pray for those who tenderly care for aging parents.
We pray for those with complex and fraught relationships with parents.
We pray for those estranged from their children.
We pray for foster parents, and biological parents.
We pray for those who struggle to provide for their children.
We pray for those with traumatic pasts.
We pray for those who parent alone.
[Insert additional petitions here that might be more specific to your church]
We pray for all that we have named, and all that remains unnamed.
God, on this day, we hold in tension the complexity of parenting. Thank you for being present with us in our highs and lows, our joys and our sadness. Bless us and keep us, and hear our prayers. Amen.
13 Responses
Beautiful. So thoughtful. A keeper for the file!
So wise, so thoughtful, so beautiful. Thank you Katie
So well written. I hope your words are spoken in many churches this Sunday. As a mom and gramma who has both bio and adopted kids and grandkids, I can certainly relate. Thank you
Yes and Amen.
Thank you, Katie.
Thank you for this beautiful prayer and sharing your experience. This is so sensitive and authentic – you write from your heart. Blessings as you lead and nurture those around you.
Amen!
I’m a middle school teacher ending the school year with a sex ed unit. I am glad that, as an adoptive mom, I can bring some of these “invisible” family stories to that space as well. While every life starts with a sperm and an egg, our families come together in so many different and beautiful ways. Thanks for writing about this.
Thanks for covering this so well. As a mother to an adopted and a biological son, I am grateful. After our older son had contact with both of his birth parents in his late forties, one day he said to my husband and me, “There is enough love to go around.” It may be complicated at times, yet there is enough.
A holiday for some, a memorial for some, an observance for some, and a point of grief and anxiety for some—common in all of our personal and family “days,” such as birthdays, anniversaries, and the like. And contemporary culture finds a way to pile on, and then repeat for Fathers Day. Thanks for passing along Walterstorff’s words and for your liturgical piece.
One aspect of parenting I now enjoy also as a grandparent is to observe my kids now in their parenting roles, all done as uniquely as who they were as kids and now as they are as adults.
As a former “liturgist,” father of four sons, one who’s adopted, and also having “lost” a daughter, and now a great-grandfather thanks to IVF, I appreciate the thoughts expressed….and wonder if Katie’s prayer could be read with a brief introduction, and then give the worshippers a time of silence to pray their particular prayers as they apply the “suggested” prayer. Hearing and praying it all at same time may be difficult.
Katie, Thank you for your article. I appreciate it. I have three grown sons. The middle one was adopted and we adopted him because he needed a home. His younger brother was born just nine months after we adopted number two, My number three son has five biological children and four who came from Africa. They came from Ethiopia and Uganda. My number two son was put up for adoption because his biological mother was having a child who was part Black and part white. My husband and I welcomed him with open arms. You can see how I love adoption. Half of my grandchildren, and that is eight of sixteen, are from the adoption process. Thank the Lord that there is a way for children who have a time in their life that is uncertain can be put full time in the arms of Christian parents.
Thank you for this thoughtful venture into complexities. I offer in my poem below additional complexity I have pondered.
My Mother was Against Abortion
My mother was profoundly
anti-abortion
though we never talked much
about the matter.
I do remember once
when she enrolled, later in life,
in a course to become
a crisis phone counselor
but then learned
she would need
to be okay
with a woman
needing an abortion.
And she could not
be.
When a baby was
on the way,
regardless of circumstances
my mother believed
you made a way.
But I also remember
my mom telling me
why she had her babies
all seven of us
at the Protestant hospital in town,
never the Roman Catholic one.
Because “they believed”
if there was trouble when
a baby was being born,
the baby’s life should be saved
before the mother’s.
And she profoundly disagreed
with that Catholic doctrine.
She was clear about that choice.
Her life came first.
Oh, how I wish
my mother could have
come to understand
another woman’s need for an abortion
as a way for her too
to put herself first.
© Emily Jane VandenBos Style, 2019
https://www.aclu.org/print/node/47662