A Bittersweet Mother’s Day
Mother’s Day 2026
Mother’s Day has been bittersweet for me for quite a few years now. I mean really, it’s just another day, but I remember being a kid who was thankful for my mom and how she sacrificed to stay home with my brother and me, while also looking forward to becoming a mom myself one day.
As a young adult, that feeling grew stronger, and eventually my husband and I were blessed to get pregnant with our first baby, only to lose it a couple months later, not long before Mother’s Day 2018. I remember people who knew about the miscarriage telling me, “Happy Mother’s Day,” which was hard.
To be a mother, yet not experience motherhood, is still to be a mom.
By late summer 2019, we were blessed with the birth of our oldest daughter. Both my parents and my in-laws met us at the hospital with open arms. She was the prettiest blue-eyed, blonde-haired (or shall we say peach-fuzzed) baby, and I was so excited, and relieved, to finally be holding her earthside.
As I began experiencing motherhood for the first time, tension between me and my own mother began to grow deeper.
We were blessed with our second baby a few years later, and my mom saw her the day she was born and then one brief time after that. The unkept promises, constant hurt feelings, and unheard words became too much, until we finally went our separate ways once and for all.
After a couple of attempts to overcome our differences, the last time we spoke was almost two years ago now, with no reconciliation in sight.
On days like today, I wish I could reach out and simply tell her thank you for being my mom. Even though we look at life very differently now, I appreciate what she did for me when she was in my life. Despite all the disagreements, I am truly thankful for the nourishment and care she gave me as a child and for doing the best she could at the time. Heck, I wouldn’t even be here without her. It seems one cannot simply say thank you or, “Happy Mother’s Day,” though, because the past still feels too raw, I guess.
How is one supposed to be grateful for the past, yet protective of their present and future peace? When the person you’re grateful for is incapable of knowing so, does it still count?
Learning to forgive without an, “I’m sorry,” is a faith battle in and of itself, but while I’ve worked to forgive from afar, I pray my mother and father have too. Not for me, but because I know how much holding onto unforgiveness weighs a person down. Jesus didn’t come for us to continue carrying burdens that were always too heavy for us to bear.
Growing up in my household, if someone believed they were right, that meant the opposing viewpoint must obviously be wrong. Yet through more recent growth, I’ve come to believe that two things can be true at the same time, and even if they’re not, not every disagreement needs to be voiced.
Release. Be willing to lose the battle to win the war. That one concept has freed me so much, though not before causing some major damage beforehand.
As I grow in my leadership, I realize more and more that so much of what people live in is shaped by what they were told growing up. So much of people’s reality is framed around statements they heard as children that often aren’t even true. When someone can step back and ask why they believe what they do, honestly question whether it’s even true, and then be willing to unlearn in order to relearn, I believe they can find a peace they never knew existed.
Anyway, all this to say, today is bittersweet. I don’t talk about this much anymore, but I miss who my mom could have been — not only in my adult life, but especially in my children’s lives. She was, and would have continued to be, a pretty awesome grandma, but my kids wouldn’t even know her if she walked into the same room today. That is wild to think about.
At the end of the day, I’m thankful that I worship a big God who can do big things and who has sustained, and will continue to sustain, through every season, whether I see my earthly mom again on this side of eternity or not. As the great leader Art Williams once said, “All you can do is all you can do, and all you can do is enough.”
I am thankful that I get the opportunity to be the mom I always yearned to be. Thankful that I can learn from the past and press forward into what is to come. I still have plenty of growing to do, and I pray I still have many, many years left to do so.
Raising my daughters is one of the greatest joys of my life, and I pray I stay humble enough to always see them for who they are. I pray they always know they are enough just as they are, while never stopping short of who God continues to call them to be. I pray I support them in their endeavors and never try to make them into copies of myself, but instead relish in all that God is molding them into.
Happy Mother’s Day to all you bada$$ mothers out there! Keep doing what you do, lay it all at the feet of Jesus and never stop pressing into all that God has for you on this side of Heaven.
We’re just getting started ;)
