You Don't Need to Be Called "Mom" to Be a Mother

Happy Mother’s Day!

Whether you are an empty-nester … a great-grandmother … have 5 children at home … or just found out that you are pregnant with your first … you deserve to be celebrated with gusto!

This is the week that we salute moms!

Thank you, moms, for wiping noses … for packing lunches … and for figuring out 267 different ways to fix macaroni and cheese.

Thank you, mothers, for scratching backs and for doing laundry … for dealing with play dough on the kitchen floor and with glitter on the living room carpet … thank you for dying Easter Eggs and for baking birthday cakes.

Thank you, dear moms, for losing your girlish figure without complaint … for understanding that stretch marks are a badge of honor … and for memorizing “Pat the Bunny”.

Thank you for staying up all night rocking a colicky baby … getting up at the crack of dawn to potty train a strong-willed 2 year old … packing a lunch for an independent 6 year old … and then even brushing your teeth before you kiss your husband off to work.

Thank you, mothers everywhere, for saying an emphatic “NO!” to determined teen-agers … for sitting in the rain at soccer games, football games and t-ball games … and for eating the crusts of PBJ sandwiches every day for lunch for decades.

Thank you for changing a diaper that no one else would change … for reading “The Little Engine that Could” 147 times in just 48 hours  … and for peeling more potatoes in the course of your child’s life than are grown in the entire state of Idaho.

You are a woman who regularly moves mountains … you move mountains of laundry … mountains of shoes … mountains of toys … and mountains of shoes.  You are a mountain-moving woman!

You have willingly stopped carrying a make-up bag in favor of a 30-pound diaper bag. 

You haven’t worn perfume in years yet a particular fragrance lingers on your skin and on your clothes … it is the odor of yesterday’s apple juice and this morning’s spit-up.

No one is able to adequately measure how much a single mother gives day after day after day but every mother knows that she has been given the greatest gift of all … the gift of investing in the life of a child.

Motherhood, as wonderful as it is, is simply not the greatest goal for a Christian woman.

The greatest goal for any of us, either male or female, is becoming like Jesus.

If you have experienced the unexplainable miracle of motherhood, then the Holy Spirit will use your mothering experience to help you to die to self and to become more like Jesus.

If you are not a mom and will never be a mom, then the Holy Spirit, Who is God’s right-hand Man in working all things together for good, will use that experience to help you to die to self and to become more and more like Jesus.

If, like Hannah, you are crying out to God to give you babies, then the Holy Spirit will use these days of waiting as days of strengthening and will enable you to conform to the very image of the God Who created you.

From personal experience, 5 times over, I can tell you that motherhood is the most clarifying mirror that a woman ever faces in life.  Motherhood has exposed to me all the ways that I am a sinner and not a saint.

Not being a mom has a way of revealing that, too.

Wanting to be a mom and having to wait for God to answer has a way of revealing our weaknesses as well.

You see, God uses both the presence and the absence of children in the lives of His dearly loved daughters as one of the primary tools to sculpture us into His beautiful image.

If today, this Mother’s Day, 2015, you are longing to be called by the dearly loved term, “Mommy,” and it hasn’t happened yet for you, I can assure you that Jesus is enough to fill all of the empty places in you.

God loves you deeply and passionately whether or not you have children. Your Father desires to comfort you in your longings to raise children and He will strengthen you when you are overwhelmed by the never-ending demands of the children that you have created.

Unfulfilled desire is often the road that Jesus tenderly guides us on in order to give us something better.  At the end of the road of waiting and of unsatisfied longings, He simply gives Himself.  What could be better than that?

When we don’t get our way and when something that we deeply desire eludes us, He gives to us, His disappointed children, a measure of His love that we would never know without the pangs of discouragement knocking at the door of our hearts.

So … let me start over by saying once again … Happy Mother’s Day!

The second Sunday in May is not a day to remind women everywhere of their failures, their disappointments or who they used to be and look like … but it is a day to remind women in all walks of life the complete necessity of and the delightful fulfillment that is found in serving the Lord with gladness.

For all women … old and young … married and single … barren and fertile … this should be a day of promise and of purpose!

You, as a daughter of the Most High God, have the capacity to make a difference in the life of someone else!  Your life counts for something beyond mascara, a number on a scale and the condition of your fingernails.

You, my sister, can make a difference in the lives of others and that is what it means to be a mother, anyway!  Being a mom is no more and no less than the call to make an eternal difference in the life of someone younger than you are.

The plan of God for a woman was always to instill God-given destiny in the heart of a child.  The child whom you serve can either have your DNA or not.  It simply doesn’t matter to God.

The plan of God for a woman has always been to love a child enough to fan the flame of dynamic creativity in the heart of that child.  The child whom you love can either have your DNA or not.  It simply doesn’t matter to God.

The plan of God for a woman has always been to believe in a child unconditionally and to cheer them on enthusiastically until their dreams become reality.  The child whom you believe in and cheer for can either have your DNA or not.  It simply doesn’t matter to God.

The plan of God for a woman has always been to pray for a child relentlessly until their hearts are filled with the power of God Himself.  This child for whom you pray can either have your DNA or not.  It simply doesn’t matter to God.

To instill … to love … to believe … to cheer … to pray!

Any woman can do that for any child … for any young person … for any protégée … for any disciple.

A mother, quite simply is someone who believes when no one else believes … who loves when all others walk away … who prays when all others have given up.

Let me gently remind you that you don’t have to be called “mom” to be a mother.  My prayer for you today, is that whether you are married or not … whether you have birthed babies or not … whether you have raised children or not … is that you would invest in the lives of the next generation.

I pray that by your godly behavior … by your words and by your actions … by the way that you treat others … that you will leave a legacy that shouts, “One woman, who clings to Jesus, can make a difference that will leave ripples in the pool of eternity!”

And from my heart to yours … Happy Mother’s Day!