If you have ever experienced infertility, you know what it’s like to sit in church and bless moms while you are dying inside. Year after year I faced Mother’s Day that way. It was not hard to celebrate my own mom that day, but there was still a big hole in my own heart as I so desperately wanted to have children.
Perhaps you have had a similar experience, or have lost a child tragically and can identify with the pain that can be so prevalent on this special day of celebration. Due to my own experience, I always think of this and have concern for women who want to be moms.
I grew up wanting to be a mom and played dolls into my teens! After years of doctors, prayers and even a bit of jealousy as my friends were getting pregnant, God spoke to my heart. It was this experience that truly drew me back to Him in a recommitment of my life. I realized for the first time that I was not the one who was to be in control of my life. He was! He led me to literally write my burden on a piece of paper and tear it up, leaving it on the altar of my church. When I stood up that night, I was a different person. I began to pray, “God if you do not desire that we have a baby, then you must have a different plan for our lives. Show us what that is and help us to walk in obedience. But if you leave this desire in my heart to be a mom, then I will continue to pray for that child that will one day be ours. Take this desire away if this is not your plan.”
It was Mother’s Day in 1977 that our adoption case worker saw us at church and said she’d been trying to call us the Friday before. My heart stopped beating for a minute and though she couldn’t tell us anything in particular, she said she needed to come see us the next afternoon. It was the greatest Mother’s Day of all for me on that Monday as we found out we would not only get a baby, we would get twins! Who would’ve ever believed it? God had a plan all along for us, knowing not only would these precious babies need us, but that we too needed them!
God did make us parents, but that is not always the case. And even if some women become moms, sometimes they have lost children along the way. As you celebrate this day, please be sensitive to those women in your church and community who cry each time they see a Mother’s Day card or flowers. Pray for those women and be willing to reach out to them in love and a warm hug so they know they have not gone unnoticed as you celebrate all the other moms.
Watch for upcoming web cast on infertility, adoption and prodigal children. 2010 Women’s Webcasts
Additional Women’s Ministry Resources: Women Reaching Women in Crisis
