Just a Daughter

Just a Daughter

Mother’s Day typically brings a mixed bag of emotions for me. Yet through it all, I give thanks.

The world, or at least the region I live in, tells you on Mother’s Day to honour the woman who brought you into the world and/or raised and nurtured you. However, truth is that we live in a world where mother-child relationships are not all equal. They range from bestest friends to arch enemies to non-existent due to death or abandonment - physical or emotional. For those on the high end of the spectrum, Mother’s Day is a joyous opportunity to shower a gem of a woman with tangible and intangible expressions of love. However, for those that experience(d) a relationship further along the spectrum, it can be difficult to honour mother (even though it’s also a Biblical command) because it feels more like pretend, keep up appearances, or at best, call those things that be not as if they are.

I must admit, even though my mother and I are far from arch enemies and abandonment is too severe a term to describe our relationship, the expectations of Mother’s Day have caused me to wrestle with my intense need to be authentic and my deep-seated opposition to doing something just because it is expected. Consequently, I have personally struggled with this day for most of my adult life. Through a long and arduous process involving multiple conversations with my Heavenly Father, I am learning to appreciate my relationship with my mother. This appreciation stems from Big Daddy continually helping me to view our relationship through the lens of God’s big picture and His purpose for my life instead of through the lens of the hurt child that felt she was the sacrifice for the greater good of the community…church…nation. And so as Mother’s Day 2015 approaches, I view it with thanksgiving.

Notably, my Mother's Day woes don't end there. For well over a decade, in the midst of reconciling my mother issues, there has been an added angst to Mother’s Day for me. I will call it the well-meaning Pause Pity Prophesy. Any woman over 25 years of age (or younger if you’re already married) who has not given birth to a live child probably knows what I am talking about. It happens a lot in church. Alternatively, it is experienced when saying “Happy Mother’s Day” to mother, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, cousins, or friends. This is how it goes: as everyone extends Mother’s Day greetings, they pause because they were about to say it to me but they mentally registered, “Oops! You don’t have a child.” So instead, they smile as they try to hide the sadness or disappointment or pity they feel for me and prophesy by saying something like, “next year I’ll be saying this to you.”

I am convinced that the Pause Pity Prophesy crew mean well and they are trying to be encouraging. But that awkward moment is simply that, awkward. I have accepted that without a doubt, whether you express hope that my time is coming soon or acknowledge that I’m like a mother to someone else’s child(ren) or say nothing, unless you are in my shoes OR we’re close enough for you to really know my truth and my faith, it is going to be uncomfortable. I can’t speak for every woman in this situation but I can speak for me. This may seem harsh but I really don’t want the pity (flesh) invoked prophesies and declarations that are supposed to be comforting but come across as trite. My truth is that I long to be a mother someday and in faith, I believe with all my heart that I will bring forth children from my womb. Nonetheless, until such time, I know that my life has purpose and I am fulfilling it each day that I breathe. Therefore, for all that I am right now, I thank Creator God.

I thank God because this year I almost gave in when satan tried to make me believe that it would be better to just skip church this year. Or just go to a church where I’m not known and people may not give me the Pause Pity Prophesy because they don’t know my story. Thankfully Big Daddy ministered to me and reminded me that He loves me and does not label me like the world labels me. In God’s Kingdom I am not labelled “single” or "married", “mother” or "childless", “rich” or "poor", “famous” or "insignificant". I am simply “BELOVED”.  Therefore, just as year after year I rose above the noise of “when are you going to get married…you’re getting old…you need to stop being picky i.e. settle” and continued to live purposefully as an woman of God who was unmarried, I will live joyously and purposefully as a woman of God who is married with no biological children. Every day that I have breath, I will live out 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 “ Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”