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How to Minister to the Motherless Mother

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As Mother’s Day approaches, my heart is especially sensitive to my motherless friends for whom this holiday will be hard. I have friends who will be standing by grave sites this Mother’s Day. I also have friends whose moms haven’t been a part of their lives in many years. And those who have challenging relationships with their moms who try to navigate Mother’s Day with grace but some necessary distance.

No matter the circumstances, I wanted a post that could help those feeling the sting of a mother’s absence.

My friend, Lisa-Jo, knows this delicate struggle in deep ways. And from her own pain, she pens these words for us …

My mom used to dance in the mornings.

A happy, shameless jig in her PJs right out there in the driveway as my dad drove us off to school. She’d dance and wave and grin and I could feel the love well up from my toes to my nose. It spilled out of me—this being someone’s daughter. Loved. Cherished. Celebrated.

She’s been dead now 21 years to the day since I turned 18.

Time passes and with it go the birthdays, love stories, anniversaries, new babies, first steps, preschool orientations, international moves, new jobs, hair-color changes. And each milestone is a mile more in the road that we don’t walk together.

I am the motherless daughter.

And three continents and three kids later, I have grown up into the motherless mother.

Of two sons. And a daughter.

Everything I can’t remember about my mother I see reflected in my daughter’s eyes. I am terrified by how much I love her. How does a mother bear it? The good-bye. Twenty years. Twenty years. It hurts to type it.

Twenty years ago, I sat in a pew and sang the last words my mother left for us:

Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,

‘It is well, it is well, with my soul.’

One week after I’d turned 18. I’m 39 today. And I’m still singing it, Mom. I’m singing it still, and I still believe every hard, awful word to be true. That we can sing though the heavens crash open and the world comes pouring down around us. We can raise our eyes and our voices to the hills, where our help comes from, and sing. Even when all that comes out is a whisper.

Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,

‘It is well, it is well, with my soul.’

So many of us make the journey to motherhood without a mom. Whether she’s absent because she chose to leave or because she was emotionally unavailable or because she died like mine did, we all have to make sense of what that means for our own mothering.

I am the motherless mother.

If you are too, can I take your hand?

Can I stroke the hair back from your forehead and just be here with you? Can I whisper, “I know,” and let you cry if you need to? Can I just sit a while beside you as you shout the hard questions?

I believe God can take it.

I believe He invites it.

The Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. Romans 8:26

Go ahead and groan child. Let the part of you that never got to grow up with a mom, never got to bear down with her as you bore down in labor, never got to introduce her to your own babies—let that part of you weep if she needs to. You are beautiful and loved and not a single tear falls to the ground uncherished by the Father God who holds us both.

You keep track of all my sorrows.

You have collected all my tears in your bottle.

You have recorded each one in your book.
Psalm 56:8

You are your mother’s daughter, created in your Father God’s image. And nothing can break that.

We’re in this together. Every step of the way. And you are braver than you know, for all the ways you mother.

So let us celebrate quiet together. Whisper into the comments what you miss, what you loved, what you wish she might have done different, what you wish you’d said, what you wish she knew about her grand babies, what makes you your mother’s daughter.

And today I will stop, remember and rejoice with you, my brave, beautiful, utterly beloved sister!

Happy nearly Mother’s Day,

Lisa-Jo Baker is the bestselling author of Surprised by Motherhood: Everything I Never Expected About Being a Mom. Her writings on motherhood are syndicated from New Zealand to New York and you can catch up with her daily chaos at LisaJoBaker.com.