The National Retail Federation’s annual survey for 2024 shows Americans will spend a total of $33.5 billion celebrating moms. Although it is a bit less than the $35.7 billion in 2023, the NRF estimates that grateful families will spend an average of $254.04 letting their moms know they are loved and appreciated. The first time I ever celebrated Mother’s Day was on May 14, 1989. Pamela and I had been married for eleven months. In marrying her, I not only found a wife and a life partner, but I also gained a mother named Shirley. I called her Momzo. Being a rookie, I followed Pamela’s lead and helped her shop for the perfect card and gifts we would present to her mom.
It’s ironic to write about the celebration of Mother’s Day, because even though I was birthed by a woman, she has never been a mother to my siblings nor to me. Before Pamela’s mom, nuns were the closest I came to having a mother. The Order of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word started in France and was eventually sent to Galveston, Texas to run hospitals during the Civil War. In the years to come, the Order grew and spread its work beyond Texas, throughout the United States, and into Central and South America. The nuns at St. Margaret’s Children’s Home, where I was raised, came from the inner city of St. Louis, Missouri, where they served as teachers. These were my moms. It’s because of them that I am a reader and a writer. It’s because of them that I am an artist and a musician, and it’s because of them that the things that break the heart of God break mine.
They developed faith in me, so I was willing to say to the mountain, “Move!” My nun moms taught me to care for everyone, with no exceptions. I learned to find a need and fill it. I’m pretty sure Frederick Buechner got his inspiration for his quote: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet,” from my nun moms. They taught me to find that place and live in it.
I’ve been able to vicariously experience the joy a mother brings by watching Pamela be a mother to our sons. Though it sounds like a cliche, it’s true. There is no better mom for our boys than her. Mixed in with all that sugar and spice, and everything nice is a snake and critter-loving, bug and bird enthusiast, night sky marveler, LEGO loving, wild woman. She goes from painting her nails to chasing mud lined island waterfalls. A true rainbow roustabout. She has taught the guys the ways of womanhood, the pitfalls, and the joys. She has taught them how to be an asset, not a hindrance. She was my son’s first teacher, their first Valentine, and the best mother of the year for now and always. Because of the goodness of God, all that I missed by not having a birth mother, I’ve been able to enjoy as I watch my sons revel in, and delight in their mom. It works the same way for women without a mother. One day they will marry, and have children. They can be the mother to their children that their mother was not to them.
When I was pastoring and Mother’s Day approached, apprehension filled my thoughts as I prepared my sermon. I knew there would be those in the pews who, like me, had experienced what I have written about . . . a loss of a mother, a non-existent mother, even mothers who abused. I walked through the tension of wanting to celebrate the moms who were mothering and nurturing, those who had sacrificed and yet to be sensitive to the hurt within the room. In the end, I decided to address both. The blessing and the pain. Psalm 27:10 in the Amplified Bible assures us that “although my father and my mother have abandoned me, Yet the LORD will take me up [adopt me as His child]. Romans 8:15 tells us that we have received a spirit of adoption, no longer slaves to anything, not even the pain, the loss, and the sadness, wanting to obliterate this day. The big takeaway here is God can be a father and mother. Although I am scarred, and I’ll always wonder what it would have been like to have a mom, those scars have been treated by a form of spiritual dermabrasion. The scars are no longer angry and red, rough to the touch. By the kindness of Jesus, they’re now smooth so that they look like an inlay, the kind you see on beautiful furniture or works of art.