a sermon, shared with How to Make a Family by Quaker pastor (and friend), Angie Best-Boss:
Another Good Enough Mom
I have a new favorite website – it is filled with incredibly snarky cards you send via email. And while I didn’t have the courage to send any, the Mother’s Day cards were perfect:
Dear Mom, I hope a mediocre Mother's Day brunch can help negate 364 days of my smug ingratitude.
Or….May your Mother's Day celebration temporarily distract you from the horrid economic reality of your delayed retirement.
Or…Mom, thanks for teaching me about boundaries by never observing any.
And lastly, Dear Mom, I love how we don't even need to say out loud that I'm your favorite child.
Ok – I lied – I did send the last one. And I CC'd my brother.
Can you tell I’m not a huge fan of the Hallmark propaganda? Now I can totally carry off a colored macaroni necklace and I can decorate a fridge with some serious homemade cards; I just hate the teacups and plagues and fake syrupy sweetness that too often accompany Mother’s Day.
Because I live in the real world – like the kind where police came to my house this week. I was pulling into my driveway and a neighbor, a good friend of mine, met me there. My friend knew everyone in the house was gone, but as she drove by, she saw that our front door was wide open. Being the good friend she is, she called the police to come over and make sure no one had broken in. Before I got home, they had gone in, looked around and made sure nothing was wrong.
As Stephanie was telling me what had happened, I was standing in my driveway remembering what the house looked like when I had left that morning. Dishes on the table, vacuum cleaner plugged in and stretched across the room, and a motley assortment of shoes, backpacks, jackets and brushes littered the floor. I suspected the police might think my house had been trashed by criminals, when it was just my kids getting ready for school.
The truth is out. I am not a perfect mom. I haven’t been since I first started fifteen years ago. I meant to give up caffeine and have a drug-free labor, but I failed. All three times, actually. I have fallen asleep while Kaylyn was telling me about her day. Before Clara learned how to read, when I would read her bedtime stories, I would skip major sections to make it go faster – until eventually, she caught on. Of course, Katy can’t read yet. And I am seriously considering lying and using baby picture of Kaylyn to fill the empty pages of Katy’s baby book.
That’s not all. When they were very small, at random times, I would knock them down. Now I didn’t do this in a mean or cruel way. Or even on purpose. Mostly I did it when they got in my way. I mean, toddlers are very short, and it’s hard to see them way down there, especially if you’re carrying a load of laundry. Also, I knew that at times they would be the victims of cruelty, meanness and plain old bad luck, and that they needed to learn how to get knocked down and then, to get back up, and the sooner they learned it the better.
So this is not the Mother’s Day message where I get to tell you how I have it all together and you can, too, in just three easy steps.
Nor is it the one where I tell you to honor your mother, perfect and blessed saint, she is (or was) -- though she well may be. See I only know the story of myself and that of my own mother, and I only know a portion of those stories. Instead this is the Mother’s Day sermon where I say we mean to do well, but we falter along the way, and loving grace has the potential to cover a lot of gaps in our relationships.
See, my mom never wanted to be a mother and she wasn’t very good at it.
I remember being dropped off at dance class and she would forget to come and get me for hours at a time, getting sidetracked by almost anything – a book, drawing in the park, a good cup of coffee.
When I was 11, my mother walked away, moving to Europe, leaving me with an angry father and a younger brother to care for. There were times I needed her and she simply wasn’t there. We’ve mended our broken places, and I’ve grown enough to see that she did as well as she knew, with the resources she had available to her at the time. It wasn’t enough – I wanted more, I needed more. The truth was - she failed then.
I remember sitting in a church pew trying to figure out how to get my brother to ball practice as I balanced high school and two jobs, while feeling ashamed and embarrassed because the pastor talked about honoring your mother and passed out trinkets to the oldest mother and the mother with the most kids. And I bristled at too many Mother’s Day sermons where I was told how and what I was supposed to say and do and feel. Because all I had were the feelings I had. Of disappointment, hurt, anger and frustration. That was the truth of what I experienced.
Those feelings changed from year to year as we both changed. I can accept what she can offer now without being bitter about who she wasn’t. I can honor the love and kindness she can give me now, because that it also the truth of who she is.
Plus, now I’m a mom. And I’ve been known to utter these warm, soothing words to my children, “I know, I know – I am a horrible mother. Go put a dollar in the therapy jar.” Because I truly and honestly believe that one day, when my children are grown, they will sit on a couch across from their therapist or their best friend and explain just how their mom failed them. And they will be right. It will be true. But it will only be a portion of the truth. And then it will be their turn to learn that a portion of the truth isn’t the whole truth at all.
That’s where I tend to get mixed up – in not letting my failures define me. Because if I were to list every role I have – as a counselor, a writer, a friend, a wife, a Quaker, I can list some ways I have failed at each one of those. Spectacular failures, some of them.
A few years ago, I was frustrated with my closest friend who was pregnant and not taking care of herself. I became irritated at what I saw as her irresponsibility and I told her so, reminding her that if she didn’t take better care of herself, she would lose her baby and just imagine, how guilty she would feel. The truth was, I was harsh and judgmental and unkind.
And then a week later, when baby Nate was stillborn, I sat with her in her hospital bed and we cried together as we held him and said goodbye and planned his funeral. Offering compassion and warmth and tears was also the truth.
And so we learn. First, we learn not to let our failures define us. When it comes to the Bible, I’m not a big fan of Paul. I tend to read his letters with a pretty critical eye. But one thing he wrote that reasonates with me is the idea that we don’t see everything nearly as well as we think we do. For now, he says, we only see dimly, a portion of that which is true.
And it reminds me of the Buddhist story of six blind men who were asked to determine what an object was by feeling different parts of its body. It was an elephant and the blind man who feels a leg says it a pillar; the one who feels the tail says it is a rope; the one who feels the trunk says it is a tree branch; the one who feels the ear says it is a hand fan; the one who feels the belly says it is a wall; and the one who feels the tusk says it is a pipe.
A wise man explains to them: "All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently is because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all the features you mentioned.”
My failures as a friend, a person of faith, a mother -- are real, but they aren’t the whole truth. What defines me is simply this: I am God’s beloved. No more, no less.
My failures do not define me, or make me less worthy of honor or love or gentleness or compassion, and neither do anyone else’s failures, regardless of whether I think they are better or worse than my own missteps. We hear the echo of the voices – our own or someone else’s...
You’re no good
You are a problem, a burden, a failure.
The voice that keeps saying, "If you want to be loved, you had better prove that you are worth loving. You must show it."
My favorite writer Henri Nouwen says to listen to the very important voice that says, "You are my beloved son; you are my beloved daughter. I love you with an everlasting love. I have molded you together in the depths of the earth. I have knitted you in your mother's womb. I've written your name in the palm of my hand and I hold you safe in the shade of my embrace. I hold you. You belong to Me and I belong to you. You are safe where I am. Don't be afraid. Trust that you are the beloved. That is who you truly are."
To know there is much we do not know, but to believe that to be beloved, to be in relationship with others who are beloved – that is enough.
(Editor's note: Amen. Blessed be. Happy Mother's Day)
