To All Who Mother Motherless

There are a hundred ways to lose a mother. 

Cancer, car accidents, cocaine habits...

Depression, disability, distance...

My mother died when I was twelve. A man crossed the solid yellow lines and crashed her van onto the side of the road. Her loss is as much a part of me as the double helixes of DNA that make me curly headed and fair skinned.

I'm writing to you because I want you to know that you are welcome in this place and you are far from alone in the journey. I hear it from so many of you and I can see the tears that have trailed your cheeks stained. You carry a heavy weight because your mama couldn't bare fully the weight of motherhood. 

If I could see your soul it would likely look hollowed out, malnourished in all the motherless places. Years of living motherless can leave you hungry to know the curve of a mothers love, the way it can wrap itself around the bare places of your heart.

Some of you are like me. You lost your mama to circumstance or illness and you wish with all your heart that she could be here, by your side, a phone call away during those midnight feedings.
 
Others of you have mothers who made the choice to quit when you needed her most. She walked out and kept walking despite your cries and desperate need. I believe it all aches the same. No loss is more or less and the hurt, regardless of how it happened, can debilitate us. The ache can whisper into our hearts and minds that we are lacking in every way.

Let me cup your face in my hands and look deep in your eyes for a moment because there is something you deeply need to hear. It is something that I have deeply needed to hear.

Your ability to mother the children God has given you has nothing to do with how you were or were not mothered. 

I know it feels differently. I know in those moments when the baby is crying, the toddler is wailing, the teen slammed the door (again) and you disagree with your husband that it can seem the world is imploding and you're the one to blame because you weren't mothered well. I know sweet sister. I know that ache and I know the thousands of tears that you've cried because you thought you were getting it ALL wrong.

Let me whisper truth into your soul. That is a lie. 

God says He has given us everything we need for life and Godliness and that He will supply all your needs according to His riches. He is rich in grace for the motherless among us. He says once you were without hope but now He has given you a hope and future. He has placed you in a family.

You get to be the mama and you get to be a part of God's rewriting of the story.

Your past? The generations of women in your family that mothered with a limp? Women who struggled along and gave grief when they should have heaped grace? The cycle ends with you. 

There is a fire that burns bright for those of us who have lived motherless.

Motherless women have a passion unparalleled to mother well.

I know you feel it. You can be at a loss most of the time about the "how-to's" of motherhood but you rarely are at a loss about the gravity of your calling.

We are women who celebrate most bravely the big accomplishments and tiny victories of the everyday. We are mama bears who wrestle cubs into bed and read an extra story because we're utterly convinced it matters.  

In Christ we mother whole even with a hole in our hearts. That's the beauty of redemption. Redemption doesn't erase the scars it simply gives them meaning. It gives their story depth so that when we recount the tale to our sons and daughters we can share a different ending.

Motherhood begins long before the labor pains. We learn the lay of the land from the women before us but when we hold those precious ones to our chest our story takes on a life of it's own. Live that story in confident hope God will meet you in the middle and fill in all the gaps and cracks.

And if you're ever feeling alone in the midnight of motherhood just wave a hand. I'll be there and together we'll remember the truth. We are whole in Christ. Whole to mother fully though our own mothers failed us. Whole to risk failure to change the future.

Are you feeling the ache today? Leave your tears and hurts in the comments and we'll take it to Jesus together.

Mother's Day Redeemed

The dress was gauzy and springy, covered in flowers and every pastel color you could imagine. She'd bought it from Belk, the one we frequented in late August to pick out new school clothes, and it was the last Easter dress I ever remember buying as a child.

Less than three months later I'd wear that dress and sit on the same burgundy covered pew that I'd perched on the edge of Easter Sunday but this time it would be for my mother's funeral.

My heart was breaking into a thousand pieces. The choir sang of going home and I dreaded the walls of what was my home and the emptiness of it all. The joy-filled face of my mama noticeably gone from the choir loft. Forever gone from my world as I knew it.

Eighteen years have passed between my mother and I since then. I've been haunted by her absence and when everyone else only occasionally thinks of her, less and less as time goes by, I have found myself thinking of her, wishing for her, missing her something fierce with each passing year.

All this unexpected grief circling back around to blindside me at the strangest times. 

I've missed her at the kitchen with dishes piled high in front of me. I've missed her in the quiet of a thousand midnights while wrestling the questions that life can hand us unexpectedly. I've missed her when I've printed pictures of our daughter for the rest of the family- knowing she would have made a gallery wall out of her grandchildren. I've missed her on those nights I need to sink into the couch and watch Dirty Dancing- because of course we would.

I've missed all the growing up and getting to know the mama you don't know as a child. For me I grew up but my mother never got to in my mind and that aches in the deep places. It aches to not know my mama the way other women get to know their mamas.

Some of you are motherless daughters too. You've lost mamas to cancer. You've lost mothers to the bottle. You've lost moms in long battles and quick as a flash moments. You've lost mothers who still live in the flesh but have left you without.

Mother's Day can feel like it isn't for us. The day can feel like a cruel joke meant to remind us of her absence.

I wish there was a band-aid big enough or a cup of tea large enough to make it right. I wish that I had words, but after eighteen years this girl who loves words still can't find the right ones to make the hurt of it all go away. 

What I have come to believe is that those of us who have lost mamas are a rare breed. We are the women who know the full value of motherhood. The worth of a mama who loves well and the richness of that relationship isn't lost on us.

When I think of my motherless sisters I think of brave. I look at you and I know that not one ounce of you doubts that motherhood is a gift. I see your determination to mother well. I want to link arms tight and believe with a full heart that we can be the mamas who shout it from the highest hills that motherhood is the highest of callings. 

A pity that one day a year we'd feel the weigh of it all. I stole a mountain bike and rode the most ridiculously hard trail one Mother's Day to hush the hurt. That is okay if that is where you are at, but I've got this crazy idea that God can redeem it all.

I've got a crazy idea that we can make Mother's Day a celebration of motherhood in spite of our own losses and seeming inadequacies.

Seriously. All of it. God rejoices to redeem all of it. Every bit of the feeling left out and the wishing she were here.

Go find the pictures of her from her senior prom. Dig out the scrapbook with the newspaper clipping chronicling your parent's romance. Gather your kiddos close and teach them all you know about her.

Will there be tears? Yes. Will our voices catch in our throats at some point? Yes. Don't hold back from the grief or it will hold you back from a life lived wholeheartedly.

Mine is a life come full circle. My daughter, there is just something about her, the way she looks back over her shoulder at me and her eyes flash. That's the years being redeemed by God and I'm finding it looks a whole lot like my mama. 

Leave me a line in the comments about your mama. I'd love to get to know you and her a bit. 

{Looking for another way to celebrate your mother and this Mother's Day? Why not throw a tea party in her honor? Might I also suggest picking up a copy of Surprised by Motherhood: Everything I Never Expected About Being a Mom by Lisa-Jo Baker. Reading Lisa-Jo's journey through being a motherless daughter was like talking with a friend who just gets it. I know it will touch you in the deepest places of the ache.}

5 Minute Friday: In Between

Every week we live like it is summer year around for just 5 minutes. A writing flash mob of sorts gathers to "pen" and share 5 minutes of free writing.

Join us!

My 5 minutes on "In Between" (arguably one or two words...hmph)

It was in the waning hours of day that I lay awake remembering the day's significance. Yesterday I marked another year off the calendar of my life, another year without my mama. I'm not sentimental or morbidly obsessed with the occasion and I don't circle it in red every year.

Truth is that it is the season that so often brings her near.

It is late June and the North Carolina humidity can be brutal. The sunshine hangs on tight for a little longer than the rest of the year and a girl can get lost catching fireflies in the dim evening light. Her life seems like a distant flicker one I'm always trying to hang onto just a little more with each passing year.

Seventeen years are in between her life and mine. Seventeen years of my life's changing seasons yet her's is always summer burned into my memory.  There is a teenage girl and a young woman and a clueless bride and a new mama that all fill my in between, but my mama is ever the same in my heart. She was a July baby and to me she is strong and ruby hearted.

All this time and I wonder what time would have done to her, how it would have changed her and how God would have rearranged her. How He would have grown her into a grandmother and a friend. I wish that all the in between that is filled with my growing and changing could be shared with her growing and changing.

I reset the timer for another year and the questions will always be there, the wondering that all of us motherless daughters do as the days languish into years. For now I'll soak in another day of summer, another day of her nearness that is everything about this season.

I am always on the other end of the in between and I can't wait for God to fill in all the empty space someday. 

25 Truths Every {Motherless} Daughter Needs to Know

1. You are always first and foremost a daughter of the most high King. There are no orphans in the Kindgom of God.

2. It will never not hurt. Whether you are eighteen or eighty that mama shaped hole will always ache. I wish that someone had told my twelve year old self this.

3. The richest of  life's blessings can live right next to that hurt. Don't let fear tell you any different.

4. You will miss her in the strangest moments. When you splash water from the sink all over your new dress on the way out the door to church. When you're driving in the car and that song comes on. The one that she danced around the kitchen too. The tears will swell and sister, let them fall.

5. Not everyone has a perfect mother even if she is living. Some women don't have a mother at all even if she is living. Sometimes that is harder than not having a living mother. Always reach out to love that type of motherless daughter.

6. Some women have amazing mothers. That is something to celebrate even if our own mothers aren't with us.

7. Having your own children will bring the loss of your mother full circle. It will feel like hurt and healing all at once.

8. You will feel more passionate about the calling of mothering than you ever imagined possible. Embrace that passion. It is one of the few gifts we are given as motherless daughters. We know the power of motherhood and what a power it is.

9. Your husband won't know what to do with your grief, but he will let you cry. Don't expect him to know what to do with your grief. Just let him be that shoulder to cry on. I've soaked my husbands shirt with ugly crying more than a few times.

10. There will be days when you wonder if you know how to do anything right. You wish that you could pick up the phone and call your mama for all that advice she never got a chance to give. Don't let those days defeat you. Your ability to love and care for yourself and others does not hinge on you having a mama of your own. Don't believe that lie.

11. Mother's Day will be bittersweet. Make it more sweet than bitter. Plant flowers, go for a run, eat the best dark chocolate you can afford, whatever you need to sweeten your day and your mama's memory.

12. Fear from loss can keep you from loving fully. The loss of your mom will make you fear losing other things and whisper that it is all right to hold those you love at arms distance. Don't listen to it.

13. You are never not your mother's daughter. Death can't take that from you. She is woven into your very own DNA. 

14. It is important to teach your children about your mama. You are the only memories that they will have of her. Make a photo album of her just for them. Let them give her a name just like they would any other grandmother. Celebrate her birthday. Make it about her life for them, not her death.

15. Some of us had great moms and we lost them. Some of us had moms who failed us during their lives. Most of us had a combination of those two things. Grieve all of it not just her physical death.

16. There are more than enough mamas to go around in the family of God. Pursue relationships with older women and let them pour into you.

17. Know that you are beautiful. The temptation is only to see the cracks. Some of our mothers failed to tell us that in real time and it has left deep scars. God says we are beautiful and no amount of our mothers saying that or not saying that changes that fact.

18. You will wonder what it would be like to have a relationship with your mom as an adult. Don't romanticize it. You might have been best friends, but you also might have butted heads in a very real way.

19. Write it down. All those memories, the way she rubbed in her foundation and swept eyeshadow across her lids, write it down. {Another great way to achieve #14 for your children)

20. That need to please that you have deep down in your soul, you know what I am talking about. That part of you that wants to hear your mama say "That's my girl!" one more time. Let it go. She is proud of you. God says that who you are in Him is enough and...you are and it is. 

21. Sometimes we need a good cry about all this mama-less living. Let yourself have those moments. Preferably with a cupcake.

22. Choose joy. When you are tempted toward self-pity. The loss of our mothers does not define us. Choose joy. 

23. Remember that you are not alone. We are a rare sisterhood. I'm holding your hand and I'm going to squeeze hard when this road gets rough.

24. You don't have to live under a cloud of loss. God's grace is sufficient and you can embrace your own family in the freedom of that grace.

25. Be a mother to someone. A motherless daughter knows the power of motherhood. Be that in someone's life.