I always struggled to buy a card for my mom on Mother’s Day. For the most part I cherished my mother. She was fiercely independent, adventurous, a rebel and always doing something that made us howl in laughter. Yet there were the times when she drove me absolutely insane!
The older I got, the more I could see how her history made building relationships difficult. The understanding helped but I still wondered at times if I should just write her off and walk away. Yet, I came back always to this one thought: “She’s my mom.”
There is an exhortation in the bible to honour our mother and father and it is accompanied by a promised blessing. I was schooled in the notion that God created family as a sacred space for nurturing love, honouring God and raising children.
There are instructions in the bible on how to parent well, be a good spouse and even be a good son! So no matter the feelings my mother generated in me by her actions, I was guided by this one truth: She’s my mom.
Mother’s Day is not about celebrating the perfect mother (despite what all the cards seem to say), it’s about imperfect children honouring their imperfect moms and finding some words to say, “Thank you.”
My mom’s up in heaven now but to all you imperfect moms out there, thank you for all you do, for all you sacrifice and, most of all, for just being mom.
