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Did your newly grieving or waiting mama heart brave all the happy families this Mother’s Day? Or did pain from old wounds surprise you like a shockwave while you sat in the midst of a church service?
As you sat in what should be a place of understanding and solace did your waiting or grief go unacknowledged? As you gathered with the Body of Christ this Mother’s Day did your little ones who are with Jesus go uncelebrated?
Let’s first give space to our own need. I have sat in those services, and I am sorry. I want you to know your heart is seen today. But let’s also be gentle with the Church because we are all growing up in a culture that holds little place for lament. We do not weep and wail on the street corners – there are few practiced rituals other than flowers and casseroles and getting back to “normal”. We are uninformed on the ways of grief.
Maybe they didn’t completely ignore the wounds. Maybe they tried to acknowledge, but the words weren’t enough or echoed with more hurt than healing. Again can we blame them when the pain this day holds is so intermingled with joy and so various? There are new mamas, expectant mamas, waiting mamas, bereaved mamas, adoptive mamas, foster mamas, tired mamas, sick mamas, estranged mamas, widowed mamas, and the list goes on… What words suffice for wounds so deep that speech fails? How can words serve us when mourning and dancing, ashes and joy are woven right together in a mystery that was never meant to be fully unraveled earthside?
Maybe you heard some oversimplified theology, some concrete platitudes – God’s will and all that. And maybe those words brought you right back up against the raging “Why?” and all your doubt and anger. Because if God knows, if God is the one who gives and takes away, then how can we trust Him with our grieving hearts and come to Him for comfort?
I have heard all the explanations. Free choice and sovereignty play a complicated game, and it is the enemy who comes to steal, kill and destroy. We are not living as we were designed to be or where we were intended to be, and so blood spills and bodies break.
But when you boil it down, if God knows all, then He knew when He spoke into being that the story would contain your moment of heartbreak, trauma, loneliness, despair. He knew all these ragged edges would come with the drama.
Sometimes salvation feels less like being forgiven and more like forgiving Him.
I can grieve with hope because it makes sense that we are meant for more and better than here. I want to hold my children flown to heaven, but I can’t begrudge them the Life they are already drinking.
Where I stumble is in the how they got there – it’s the trauma that takes my breath and belief away. Because when blood spills and bodies break it’s ugly.
We are right to dress tidy and beautiful on Mother’s Day, eat, laugh and revel in the living and growing that this world gives. But in this loveliness how can it also be possible that cars smash, relationships crumble, our skin tears so fragile, and longed for children just wash away in an angry rain of crimson?
I do not know.
I do not know why. If I could tell you, then maybe I would not have actually been to the depths of pain. But I have held death in the tiniest body, and that does not give me room for an easy why.
So on Mother’s Day amidst the Body of Christ I take the bread and dip it in the wine. It stains purple red, and Jesus whispers to me, “This is my blood spilt, my body broken. This is humanness. This is divine.”
And that is all the answer and all the words I need. I do not know why, but this human story – every bit of this ragged, traumatic, beautiful drama – is needed.
He holds my little ones grown strong and alive the instant they travelled to Him. They dance together and He tells me that together they wait for me to eat. While we journey here, they are not idle. A feast is being prepared, because we are human and we are eternal.
We take bread and wine and put it in our mouths.
We eat and sleep and break and dream.
So if this Sunday your heart wept quiet and your wounds felt unseen or even slighted, there is something that I hope you do…
Gather your little ones, loved ones or even just one other believer and take bread, a cracker, or a tortilla if that’s all that’s in your fridge. Dip it in wine, juice, something…
Touch it to your lips. This is how humanly Christ came.
He knows of blood being spilt and bodies broken, and He tells us there is meaning, purpose, hope, redemption. He promises us that our little ones are as real as this bread brushed against our lips and taken into our bodies.
They are alive, and one day we will feast.
Until then there are small pieces of bread dipped crimson, deep wounds, and sunny Sunday mornings.
* Last week I shared some free, printable cards for you to share with grieving or waiting mamas. It’s never to late to download these right HERE and share with a friend that needs some extra love and support!
