Mother's Day

Mother’s Day, the day set aside to honor and celebrate the women who mother, is a day that for many is filled with joy, happiness and excitement. For others, it’s a day filled with jealousy, worry, fear, resentment, and perhaps even tension.

As a small child, Mother’s Day morning was spent at church. I remember making crafts for my mom. As I grew up, I remember wanting desperately to give my mom more than a paper craft sprinkled with glitter but having very little money to do so. I was unwilling to ask my hard-working dad for money so I would save babysitting money, allowance, and lunch money to purchase something small to tell my mom that I loved her, that I appreciated her.

When I became a mom, Mother’s Day took on an entirely new meaning. I found myself in the tension between wanting to be with my two daughters in our own church where they were now the ones making paper crafts sprinkled with glitter, but I also wanted to spend the day with my mom. And she wanted me to spend the day with her and her mom. And my husband wanted us to spend the day with his mom. Easily done if we had all attended the same church and/or lived in the same town. Problem was, my mother-in-law lived 15 minutes one direction and my mom lived 35 minutes away another direction and her mom lived another 2 hours away from all of us. Mother’s Day started to become a day filled with tension. How to navigate that tension became what I wrestled through each Mother’s Day for too long.

Fast forward a lot of years (I won’t say how many as they will give away my age) to the first year I was now the one leading kids in making the paper-sprinkled-with-glitter crafts at church for their moms. I had a front row seat to the stark realization of the tension that many of the kids in the small church where I was called into vocation ministry were facing every day, let alone on Mother’s Day. It wasn’t anything like the tension that had pulled me between my church and my mom and her mom.

We, as kid’s ministry leaders, know that the kids we will throw our arms around and welcome on Mother’s Day are often being raised by dads, stepmoms, single moms, or relatives and friends who had never planned to raise them. They might be attending church at our churches for the first time because they are visiting their mom’s mom. They might be with their dad because it is 'his' weekend. They might be in what many would call a 'traditional family', but money is super tight, and they don’t have any idea how they can buy a mother’s day gift to show their moms just how much they love them.

So much tension for kids to hold.

Women and men (and maybe even you, your volunteers) in our churches are also holding tensions when they find their way to church; they desperately want children but those children haven’t come (yet), they have grown their families through adoption or foster care, they co-parent, they have a child who is lost (you might hear them referred to as a prodigal), they are raising a child in the midst of a situation they never expected to be in, they have adult kids who are great kids but live so far away it’s impossible to see them in 3D (as my BFF calls being together in person), maybe they have lost their mom since the last time they celebrated Mother’s Day and maybe, they are like me; estranged from their mom and knowing that even though they pray, that relationship will only be restored by a miracle. Maybe... Well, you fill in the blanks of the tension they hold. So much tension on the day that is supposed to be filled with so much happiness.

The good news is Hope can hold all that tension. Hope in the Hebrew is Tikvah. Tikvah literally means a stretched-out cord or a rope. So then, Hope is a rope. If you have ever heard the phrase 'when you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on to it' then you will understand that the tension we hold onto when we tie the knot at the end of our rope is the tension of Hope. Hope, Tikvah, both words happen to be my favorite words because I have learned, through the valleys and mountaintops too, that Hope has a name, and He holds our tensions.

I have learned that Hope has a name, and His name is Jesus.

Circling back to that tension kids (and many grownups) experience on Mother’s Day as they come to church, we have the opportunity to help them to reconcile the tension on a day that, if we are honest, is a well-intended, yet made up holiday. As I worked out the tension with Jesus for the way to lead these little ones (and our volunteers too!) I wondered how I might welcome all kids, to help them to honor the person who brought them to church while being mindful that not every kid has a mom who is loving and safe. He was faithful to show me the way.

I began to use different language that welcomed all kids no matter who brought them to church on Mother’s Day. I ditched the 'Mother’s Day' paper and glitter craft, even though glitter is my favorite color. I found a meaningful, budget-friendly gift that could be made and given to the person kids could choose, even if that person wasn’t the one who brought them to church. The tension released (even if just for that hour) and kids were delighted to have paint spread on their hands, stamp their hand on a plain, dollar store oven mitt and to write their own names in permanent marker along with that day’s date. Whoever they chose to gift the oven mitt to would always remember by a glance at the date that it was on Mother’s Day, no need to write it on the oven mitt. Years later, and more oven mitts than I can count, I still hear 'thank you' from grownups who have these gifts in their kitchen drawers. Tension released through an oven mitt. Tension released by Hope.

As you plan to welcome kids this Mother’s Day weekend, would you pray for the chicks Jesus brings to your flock, maybe with an excerpt from Matthew 23:37 in The Message translation in mind? 'How often I’ve ached to embrace your children, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings...'

Let Hope embrace the children in your ministry, Let Hope hold the tension. Hope has a name, His name is Jesus.

Kim is a children’s pastor, writer, speaker and INCM certified coach who passionately connects the Kingdom to the world around us because she sees Jesus everywhere and believes kids and their leaders can too. As the Children’s and Youth Ministry Manager for CTA Inc, she gets to dream big to equip children’s ministry leaders to celebrate every ministry moment while being highly effective in their ministries. You’ll often hear her say 'If you don’t like glitter, you might be bitter' because she leaves a little sparkle everywhere she goes.