3 responses to Mother's Day

To me as a kid growing up, Mother's Day was one of the biggest days, if not the biggest day, of the Spring.  It had all the hype of Easter, but where as Easter seemed to disappear into being just another Sunday, Mother's Day had meaning throughout the morning.

Celebrating Mother's Day would start a few days before Sunday.  Someone would order Carnations that would be picked up on Saturday and all the males would wear boutonnieres and the women would wear corsages.  The ones who had living mothers would wear red and if your mother had died then the flower would be white.  We would wear these on our Easter outfits.

The whole morning church service would be focused on Mothers and all that they do.  It would not be uncommon for families to travel back into town and attend the church service, just to be with their mothers.

Then about 20 years ago my family encountered a teaching that came from one of the local seminaries that stated that celebrating Mother's Day was evil and sinful because it shamed women who wanted to have kids, but for some reason couldn't.  While I understand the hurt that can come from this, I also thought that it would be wrong to penalize people that wanted to show honor to the women that played an important part of their lives (no matter if they were blood related or not).

This leads me to a 3rd response.  I saw a man who had been severely abused by his mother and step-dad as he grew up show honor to his mother.  This was not done on Mother's day, but throughout the year.  His mother was very elderly and so the kids would take turns housing and taking care of her for about a month at a time.  They came from a large family, so that the stay would only happen about once a year.  Even though this man would be justified in denying any aid to his Mom, he cared for her when it was his time to do so. He did not let her actions determine his response.  To me this was a Christlike love for someone. I have thought about this often these past 20 years as I have gone through some emotionally tough times in my life.  It also seems to me that society has forgotten this type of love for people.