This is not a happy upbeat piece, but it comes from my heart and I hope in sharing I might lesson the pain of some and turn some hurts into hope.
What follows is some very important pastoral advice, so upbeat or not, I pray you’ll listen all the way through
Many women who attend your church on Mother’s Day are not mothers. The reasons for that pain are many: they may have lost a child; they may be unmarried and with little prospects of a future marriage. They may be infertile and may not have had enough money for adoption or fertility treatments (both of which are extraordinarily expensive). They may have prayed for children for years, but for some reason the answer received was “no.” The reasons are many, but the pain felt daily by many of these women is deepened significantly on Mother’s Day. Often, this pain is intensified by the unintentional, unthinking and unkind actions of churches on Mother’s Day.