Happy Freaking Mother’s Day. I am not a fan. I think it was invented by some man who was trying to get back into his mother’s will. Clearly, this was someone who had never had to get 4 children ready for church while her husband was out of town so that they could sing a Mother’s Day song, and then listen to some talks about everyone’s angel mother and/or the scriptural examples of the paragons of motherhood. And then go home and cry because she swore at one of her kids on the way home. From church!! She couldn’t even make it out of the parking lot! She still had Froot Loops left in her yarn and cereal necklace and she was already an epic failure.

Mother’s Day is hard on all of us. Why? Well, aside from some vague “hypothetical” example like the one above—because not every woman is a mother, wants to be a mother, is married, is fertile, is physically able to carry a child to term, feels emotionally ready to raise a child, etc.

There are a plethora of reasons. Here’s one of the biggest ones:

In a talk given by Patricia Holland over 30 years ago, she said the following:

“If I were Satan and wanted to destroy a society, I think I would stage a full-blown blitz on women. I would keep them so distraught and distracted that they would never find the calming strength and serenity for which their sex has always been known.

Satan has effectively done that, catching us in the crunch of trying to be superhuman instead of striving to reach our unique, God-given potential within such diversity. He tauntingly teases us that if we don’t have it all—fame, fortune, families, and fun, and have it all the time—we have been short-changed and are second-class citizens in the race of life. As a sex we are struggling, our families are struggling, and our society is struggling.”

(You can find her talk in it’s entirety here and I highly recommend you take a few minutes to read it.)

Mother’s Day seems to bring into focus all that we are supposed to HAVE and BE and DO; and DO and BE and HAVE all at once, and ALL the time!

What if we could just let go of that expectation? The supermom? The influencer? The woman who can do and have it all while staying a size 4 and never needing therapy or even a nap? Because I’m here to tell you that girl doesn’t exist. Let me rephrase. You only THINK she exists. Ok, she might exist, but only with the help of Adderall and about 3 hours of sleep at night. She’s not going to last long.

FAMILIES ARE FOR (FREAKING) EVER

See this perfect family right above? We all look so happy-everyone is matching and smiling and clearly we have it all together! Right?

Well, if you think so, you would be wrong. Let me tell you what was going on about 30 minutes before we took this picture. It was mass hysteria.

Miss Ellie, who is sitting in my lap, thought it would be fun to put on mommy’s pearl necklace. Which she did. And then broke. And then proceeded to stick a pearl up her nose. I mean, this baby was STUCK! We tried to push it out. We tried to have her blow her nose. We thought about wd-40. Finally, my brilliant husband covered her other nostril with his thumb, put his mouth over hers, and BLEW! Success! Of course, by this time, Ellie was completely hysterical. In the midst of all the hullabaloo, Rachel started crying, probably because when she complained to me about something on her dress, I swore at her, and then Andy was fussing about his tie or something so I yelled at him, too. Three children in tears, one to go. Bekah heard everyone crying and decided to join in! Now we have four children crying in a van on the way to get family pictures taken. At Walmart, by the way, because we are super classy. I was also in tears at this point. I looked at my hubby and asked him why we were doing this?!!! He lovingly smiled at me and patted my knee and said, “Because FAMILIES ARE FOR FREAKIN’ EVER!”

Just kidding. Vaughn would never say that. I mean the “freaking” part. The rest of it is entirely true. My point is, I adore my family, I would give my life for them, but sometimes I don’t want to be in the same state, let alone the same room with them for the next five minutes, let alone for eternity. Because I am very human and deeply flawed, and just learning every day a little at a time how to do this thing called life.

WHAT ABOUT THE WIDOW?

So back to that widow we left hanging at the beginning of this post. I didn’t forget about her. I have always loved the lesson Christ teaches his disciples in Mark 12:41-44. He watches a widow come and put her two mites into the treasury as an offering, and then observed that she

“hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury:
For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living.”

I am always touched by two things—the faith of the widow to give absolutely everything, and the wholly intimate knowledge Christ had of her life. How did He know she didn’t have a secret stash somewhere? Or a piggy bank in the pasture? (Never mind, that’s ridiculous. They thought pigs were unclean. Maybe a lamb bank.) Because HE KNEW HER HEART.

Here’s the reimagining part of this little essay-what if she wasn’t old? Or childless? What if she was more like this artist’s rendition?

Does that change the story for you? Is her act of giving more holy? Because she now has not just one mouth to feed but several?

What if she wasn’t a widow at all? Just some lady who had never married? Or maybe she had been married, but was unable to have children. Or maybe she she had children and her husband left her. When does her circumstance change her sacrifice?

WORTH HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH CIRCUMSTANCE

Let’s all say that 10 times. Your circumstances do not affect your worth. Or the value of your sacrifice. Let’s just pretend the story above is now called The Parable of the Woman. Just a woman. One who is just trying to give all she has every to the Lord. I am that woman, every single day. Trying to give everything I have. Sometimes it’s a lot. Sometimes it’s two pennies. Sometimes it’s nothing. Sometimes I can’t even make it to the treasury.

But remember the other part of the story? Christ KNEW the widow. He knew she was giving her all. He knew she wasn’t perfect. He didn’t say anything about her children or lack thereof. But He knew she was a woman of infinite worth.

I know every woman is different. None of us are perfect. And a lot of us aren’t mothers in the traditional sense of the word. But we all mother in different ways. I have seen my college freshman mother my high school daughter through loneliness and friend struggles. I’ve watched my oldest daughter mother her soccer team by standing up for what she believed in and not playing in a championship game on a Sunday. I’ve been mothered by my own sister as we both struggled our way through secondary infertility. I have seen countless military spouses mother each other’s children and help support each other through all kinds of difficult times, and I am still the recipient of that kind of mothering. Some of the people who have “mothered” me the most, have no blood or familial relation to me. But their influence on me has been profound.

Just know that your daily offering, whether it is as a mother, friend, aunt, teacher, daughter—whatever role or roles you fill, you are first, a woman, of infinite worth, and YOU ARE ENOUGH. Your two mites are treasure to the One who bought you with His blood. Sometimes, I worry that it’s still inadequate, and I find myself hoping I can find an odd job or two on my way to the treasury, as if my pennies make a difference compared to the grace of Christ or the love of God.

But it is those two things which are making me who I am meant to be, little by little. So if God can accept that I am not the perfect mother or perfect anything on some random Sunday in May, I should be able to not only accept it, but celebrate the chance I have not just that day, but every day, to start over, and over, and over. And if someone feels like they need to make me dinner and bring me some chocolate, I can try to suffer through that. 😊 So Happy Whatever’s Day! You are ENOUGH and you are LOVED.