"Will all the mothers please stand?" Awkward.

A word for Infertility Awareness Week with a look ahead to Mother's Day

During the decade when my husband and I experienced infertility that included multiple pregnancy losses along with three failed adoptions, I found it difficult enough to hear all the mom-centered greetings on M-Day. But going to church made it worse when the preacher would ask all the moms to stand. Some of us would remain seated. Awkward. Then, at the door on the way out, each mother would receive a carnation—but only after she answered “yes” to the qualifying question, “Are you a mother?”

For so many of us who have mourned on M-Day, the grief has not been because we lack appreciation for the thankless work moms do. It’s not even because we’re jealous and thus unable to rejoice with those who rejoice. I had one of the best moms on earth, and I loved honoring her. Still, I kind of wished (and still wish, even speaking now as a mother and grandmother) that the Body of Christ would stick to the historical practice of marking time according to the church year (Advent, Christmas…Easter, Pentecost…) and leave the Hallmark holidays to families. I wanted (and want) us to acknowledge mothers’ sacrifices while emphasizing—as Jesus did—the invisible family in which those without children become parents and those without parents still have mothers and fathers. (Seana Scott and I wrote about this last year for Christianity Today in an article titled “Glory to God in the Highest Calling.”)

On numerous occasions, I did experience Mother’s Day as a day of grace. On the one after my first pregnancy loss, a note in the church bulletin said, “The altar flowers today are given with love and acknowledgement of all the babies of this church who were conceived on earth but born in heaven and for all who have experienced this loss.” The couple with six kids who dedicated those flowers had the empathy to feel our pain, and their action gave us a beautiful glimpse of the one who is acquainted with grief (Isa. 53:3).

At times the pastoral prayer for the people has remembered motherless children, those bereft of mothers, children or mothers estranged from each other, infertile women, and those who, for whatever reason, wish to become mothers but must wait on God’s timing. This also has been a gift.

One year during Mothers’ Day, I was in Sinaloa, Mexico, serving with a mission team. After the service, a friend stood at the door handing out flowers to all the mothers. Having himself lost a child at birth and knowing my husband and I had experienced a recent pregnancy loss, he looked at me through misty eyes and thrust his entire fistful of carnations into my hands.

Most years I really wanted to stay at home to avoid detracting by my very presence from those being honored.

My niece, who is married without children, likes to refer to the first Sunday in May as “mothering day.” Her doing so broadens the meaning to make it inclusive enough to include all who nurture. And this seems a fitting practice for the church. Families of one and families of eleven find a broader family in Christ.

Mother’s Day provides the church with an opportunity to honor mothers and comfort the mourning. We can affirm the value of family, acknowledge the difficult job mothers do, but also remember the grieving in pastoral prayers, and retire the practice of having all mothers stand. And we can even go a step further: we can align our practices with Jesus’s emphases.

When the crowd of Jesus’s followers expected him to elevate his biological family over his followers, he reminded them that his mother and brothers and sisters are those who do the will of God. He would have been well familiar with Isaiah’s writings about those who do not reproduce biologically. The prophet had recorded these words of Yahweh:

To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant—to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever. (Isa 56:4–5)

Consistent with Isaiah, Jesus implies that there is more than one way to leave a legacy. He honored the importance of family—he charged John with caring for his own mother—but he also had harsh words for those whose family-love took higher priority than love of God. Of those with such disordered priorities, Jesus said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). Don’t expect to find that verse in the responsive reading on Mother’s Day. Yet, why not?

After the unmarried John the Baptist came the unmarried Jesus and the unmarried Paul. And when greeting members of the church in Rome, Paul makes specific mention of nine women. Interestingly, only one of these does he mention as having any children. Paul greets Phoebe (Rom 16:3), a deacon and benefactor. He greets someone named Mary (v. 6), and Junia (v. 7), an apostle who did prison time for the gospel. He affirms Tryphena and Tryphosa (v. 12), Persis (v. 12), Julia (v. 13), and the sister of Nereus (v. 15). But only the mother of Rufus (v. 13) does he mention in relation to motherhood. Yet when he does so, he still gives a nod to their inclusive family connection, saying she “has been a mother to me.”

This year on the second Sunday in May, the church can take our direction from Scripture, not Hallmark. We can certainly honor mothers, as they deserve our affirmation. And we can minister grace to those who experience Mother’s Day as a day of grief. But we can also emphasize that all followers of Jesus are called to fruitfully multiply worshipers of the living God. Some of us do so by nurturing children. Others by discipling the nations. Still others by doing both. But we all do so as part of an invisible family committed to doing the will of God. In this we are the mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers of Christ. Is there any higher calling?

My "daughter-in-love” wrote this post on the mothers of the Church.

Have a listen as some colleagues, friends, and I talk about Coping with Miscarriage on The Table Podcast.

Photo by Мария Волк on Unsplash.