MOTHER'S DAY POST - May 10, 2020 by Shirley Souder

There “MOTHER’S DAY” – 2020

What is your definition of a Mom and how will you celebrate this year?

By:    Shirley Faith Souder                      Proverbs 31                              May 10, 2020

            When Tracy asked me to write about Mother’s Day, I initially felt like I didn’t know what to say.  And, we all know that, that would be quite a show stopper if I had nothing to say.

            As an only child with my mother being gone since 2007, and technically I have no birth children, who will listen to me about Mother’s Day.  So, I began really praying, and thinking.

I asked several friends who call me mom and who have said,” I wish you had been my mom!”   . . .Why?    It is quite daunting, always has been.  I have been a step-mother and step-grandmother that is true.  Yet, there is still that birth-mother thing that makes all the difference in the world.  Casey Treat says in his book “Healing the Orphaned Heart”, that professionals are still trying to find out what makes the family tick, or not.  We can have wonderful parenting experiences and close relationships to celebrate at this time of year; however, we can also have miscommunication and broken ties with moms as well as dads.  All we can ever understand is that due to life’s issues, broken promises, and choices that Proverbs 23 says”, guard your heart, for out of it springs the issues of life.

            Personally, I did not have a bonded and close relationship with my mother.  After a lot of counseling, reading and education, I realized that so many of us just didn’t have a frame of reference to know how to mother.  Some mothers are just too broken to know how to mother.

            That is where my friends came in by responding about their feelings coming from that same experience. They saw in me “an unconditional love and acceptance for them”.  They needed that in their lives and got that from me.  That was very hard to embrace.  I feel like I have really struggled in my life without that clear frame of reference. More than once I feel I have missed the mark.   Counseling helped, education helped, pouring over scriptures, praying and then finding some books I highly recommend.

            Living From the Heart Jesus Gave You by James Wilder Etc.

            Reframing Your Hurts – by his protégé Barbara Moon

            Healing the Orphaned Heart – by Casey Treat.

            As little girls and boys we all need acceptance and unconditional positive regard.  Love, forgiveness.  We needed to play, to cry, to have fun, to have attention.  And, here is the bottom line.  No matter what has happened in your life, it still is a choice to guard your heart, and change.  To want that heart, to want love and be loved. To learn how to do that no matter what it takes.   It takes making a choice for Conviction, Commitment and Change.  So, some of us will have to celebrate alone on Mother’s Day, or we have chosen families who warmly embrace

and take us in.  That has been my choice and I thank my wonderful friends who make that happen for me. There are also those of you have recently lost a mother, or still grieve for that woman who loved and honored you as a person.  Write her a letter on Sunday.  Thank you her, treasure that memory. Enjoy your day with wonderful experiences of birth mothers and relationships you have celebrated and will continue to celebrate.  I believe God pointed me to them, and them to me.  Sunday, I will get to sit around a table with people I love and they love me.