I once ran away on the eve of Mother’s Day. 

Is it safe to say things like this out loud? 

There are times and seasons that Mother’s Day can feel like a lose-lose, no matter what your people or you do. 

Because either you have to face being given these exquisite gifts that make you feel like a heel because you don’t feel like a good enough Mother at all to receive….  or you have to face the empty, rejecting ache of not any gifts that genuinely acknowledge how hard the work of being a Mother really is. 

It’s true:

For all of us, Mother’s Day holds loss. Loss of what never was and what may now never be.

Every mother is not all the mother she quite hoped to be, and every woman has a mother who wasn’t quite all she needed her to be.

And for all of us, Mother’s Day holds loss. Loss of what never was and what may now never be. For some of us, it’s the relentlessly aching and devastating loss of not ever getting to be a mother. And for others of us, it’s the raw loss of not wholly being the mothers we desperately wanted to be. 

For some, it’s more the loss of not having a mother quite like we some days direly needed, while for others of us, it’s the painful loss of the very children, and fractured relationships, who made us mothers. 

And yet for others of us, it’s the heartbreaking loss of the mothers we’d do anything to hold again for just one more long, lingering moment and never have to let go of ever again. 

Because Mother’s Day holds loss for all of us, how can we be kind and hold each other with an all enlarging love? 

Because Mother’s Day holds loss for all of us, how can we be kind and hold each other with an all enlarging love?

On that tender eve of Mother’s Day, I had run away to the foot of a mountain. Sometimes when a heart holds much emotion, it can’t help but find itself in motion — and it’s never that much emotion is the issue, as much as it is where do we turn, what direction do we go, with all that emotion.

All kinds of loss and regrets can make you look back and desperately want a do-over.  

This is the last week of high school for the last child I birthed into this tilted old world, seventeen blinking years ago. 

The girl’s giddy. And I keep smiling and blinking it back, like there’s a way to go back. 

She keeps counting down these final days with a poignant mixture of awe and sadness and wonder and unabashed tap dancing and I keep hoping she never stops tapping my shoulder because I’d do about anything for this feisty, flame of a girl aptly named the peace of Shalom. 

To be a mother is to feel time run through your fingers like water, but nothing could ever stop you from trying to drink down that same water as the sweetest taste you’ve ever known.

While it may be just 3 days before Mother’s Day that last child we walked out of a maternity ward room with will turn and waltz her way out of her last class of high school — it’s only the the day just before Mother’s Day that our firstborn will blow out his ring of 28 birthday candles and I’ll try to stay standing. 

To be a mother is to feel time run through your fingers like water, but nothing could ever stop you from trying to drink down that same water as the sweetest taste you’ve ever known.

There’s no way for you to just bottle up time and carry around the heavenly scent of your child’s newborn skin like your own signature perfume, but you’d sign away your life in a heartbeat to give them life — and countless days that’s exactly what it felt like you did, and those were the days that you were the fragrance of God. 

I carry their Mother’s Day cards in my Bible. 

It’s your children’s words, with your heavenly Father’s Word, that can form the story of a mother’s life – and form all of your life cruciform. 

A child never stops being this brilliant star in a mother’s constellation, pointing a mother home to God. 

In the bottom drawer of my dresser I keep my favorite two black sweatshirts, both gifts over this last year from our oldest daughter.  One reads in all caps M A M A … and on the other one, she had a black and white photo of us all as a family emblazoned on the front and the words, “To the moon and back” in a bold font scrawled there across the back.

The world blurred when she handed them to me. I held her twinkling eyes with my brimming ones, and I flung my arms tight around her neck. 

A child never stops being this brilliant star in a mother’s constellation, pointing a mother home to God. 

True, when you look back, there are losses and there are regrets and there is a far greater hope: 

You get a kind of do-over when you don’t overlook real moments of grace in what was, and what is, and what might yet be. 

You get a kind of do-over when you let everything you do now be completely covered over with the love of God. God stands outside of time, and He holds you with a love that outlasts time, and He can make the love in everything you do now miraculously work its way through all of time. 

You get a kind of do-over when you don’t overlook real moments of grace in what was, and what is, and what might yet be. 

You get a kind of do-over when you realize you’ve changed over the years, and you’ve grown, and you now won’t let anything be prioritized over your values, over your people, over your God. 

You get a kind of do-over when you now start doing things differently, and consistently, over time. 

And always? You get to deeply lament and grieve, and you get to feel deeply relieved that there is still infinite love to encircle every loss and all that never was. 

I set out graduation clothes.

You don’t get to go  back but you get to trust God has your heart and your back and takes your hand to walk you into amazing grace ahead. 

I kiss grinning Shalom there on the forehead, tuck one of her ringlets behind her ear, and in a blink, she’s 3 all over again. How did she become all grown up already and where in the world does time go and what I’d do to get to go back and pull that baby girl up onto my lap just one more glorious time and memorize the moment for all I am worth. 

She hugs me tight like she knows. 

You don’t get to go  back but you get to trust God has your heart and your back and takes your hand to walk you into amazing grace ahead. 

I ran away once on the eve of Mother’s Day. 

And in the face of loss and regrets, I found the face of God there at the base of a mountain and He smiled gently and caught every tear. 

You may feel like you’re running out of time, but what matters in this moment now is that you feel the joy of running with God.

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Related:

PART 2: What You Actually Really Want Most For Mother’s Day, When Mothering is Kinda Hard & Tender:

PART 1: What to Do When Mothering is Hard: Part 1