This weekend mothers everywhere will be celebrated and loved on…gifts will be given, special meals prepared, phone calls across the miles and photos taken to capture this time. Moms today come in a lot of different forms…not all are birth moms. Some may be aunts, grandmothers or sisters who have acted as a mom in someone’s life. There may be stepmoms or even just close family friends who have acted in this capacity as well.
Motherhood Defined
One Webster definition of mother uses it as a verb: “bring up a child with care and affection”. As someone who cannot have children from my own womb, this is most certainly the definition I like best!
Mommies and memories
There are many in my life who I have mothered over the years…my sister, cousins, my nieces and nephew, friends’ children, neighborhood kids…my furbabies.
Exodus 20:12 describes how we are to treat our mothers…with kindness and respect all the days of our lives. This may not be easy for some of us. While I pray most reading this had a wonderful childhood full of pleasant memories, I realize that is not the case for everyone.
Some of you may have had very troublesome childhoods. Maybe you did not grow up with a mother at all…maybe you do not remember your mother because she died when you were young. Maybe your mother did not know how to be a kind mother. Maybe she was harsh, always scolding, always yelling…always hitting.
You are not your mother
…so do not let that baggage define how you mother others. Whether you are a birth mother, an adopted mother, a friend mother, an aunt mother does not matter. You have the opportunity to pour into the lives of the children in your sphere of influence.
So pour love and laughter into them. Pour caring and courage into them. Pour harmony and hope into them. Everything you wish your mother had poured into you, pour into others.
In doing so, you bring light and joy into the world of your own children…or maybe even to others who are struggling in their home life as you did in yours.
It is my hope that you have found a Godly woman to come alongside you and mentor you in your walk…that you have Godly sisters and friends who you can rely on in periods of gleefulness as well as periods of gloom. I bid you a Happy Mother’s Day – God bless you and yours!
