By Colleen Tinker
My mother went into hospice last week. She’s 92 years old, and her gradual decline finally reached a level that prompted her doctor to say she qualified for the extra level of care hospice provides.
I’ve been introduced to a whole new team of care-givers who are quick to tell me that while my mother is their primary patient, they are there for the whole family. I’ve had conversations with her case manager nurse, her thrice-weekly bedside nurse who monitors and supplements her care, her social worker, and a chaplain. Startlingly, I’ve been surprised by a roller-coaster of unexpected reactions.
As odd as it may sound on the eve of Mother’s Day, I feel both gratitude and relief. Seeing how much attention and concern these people give my mom, I feel able to take a step back and actually admit how hard this journey has been. In the nine years since her heart-valve replacement, we have plowed through many rough, un-navigated waters. The kindness of these hospice professionals, not only toward my mother but also to me, reassures me that the Lord sees us, and He provides what we need.
Ironically, as I’m enrolling my mother into hospice and recognizing the Lord’s hand in this provision, the mother of a dear friend died last night. Although her passing was imminent, the event is still shocking, and once again I think about how these hard realities bump incongruously against sentimental events like Mother’s Day.
Not a simple day
Mother’s Day is not a “simple” day. In fact the longer one lives, the more complex it becomes. A couple of weeks ago Richard and I were previewing some Mother’s Day videos prepared for use in church services. The more we watched, the more superficial and contrived each one seemed.
To be sure, many acknowledged that people see the day from many different perspectives: some have lost children, and some children have lost mothers. Some women are grandmothers; some are pregnant, and others are not but wish they were. Yet none of the many videos we watched mentioned the darker sides of motherhood—the facets that reveal reality in a broken world.
I vividly remember Mother’s Days in the early years of my marriage. I was a step-mother to two small boys whom I loved and to whom I was committed with my life, yet “step mother” was almost never seen to those outside our family as a tender title. At the same time, my step-sons (who are now my adopted sons) experienced deep conflict on Mother’s Day as the reality of their lives was misunderstood by people “outside”.
I know that my experience is only mine, but I also know that, if we are truthful, many of us struggle with these “family days”, especially when we come from a false religion that masquerades as Christian. The reality of our unregenerate hearts marks our families, and only in Jesus can we be either the children or the parents God asks us to be.
Mother’s Day convictions
Here are my convictions about Mothers Day this year as I am still absorbing my mother’s enrollment into Hospice at the same time I’m hearing from others who realize that “family” often isn’t determined by one’s gene pool.
First, many children suffer deeply. Certainly not all, but many do. There is no standard Mothers Day card that expresses the reality some people live.
Second, many mothers live with regrets and loss. Again, many enjoy lasting relationships with children and grandchildren, but not all do.
Third, there is often no way to fix these compromised relationships, especially if one party or the other is not a born-again believer. In fact, many families from our Adventist background are fractured when one or more members trust Jesus and follow Him out of Adventism.
It was our own Lord Jesus who told us these things would happen. In Matthew 10:34–39 he said this:
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
When we trust Jesus, we become members of a completely new kingdom with a new Father and a new identity. We become sons of God, and we are indwelt and sealed by the Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:13-14). This new identity sets us in opposition to the domain of darkness that is our natural state. Those who have not trusted Jesus have not been transferred out of that domain into the kingdom of the beloved Son (Col. 1:16). Instead, Jesus Himself is the sword that divides the closest family relationships.
Our true Father, however, does not leave us without comfort. Psalm 68:6 says, “God settles the solitary in a home; he leads out the prisoners to prosperity.” And Psalm 27:10 promises, “For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the LORD will take me in.”
Jesus Himself uttered words which shock us at first. They destroy our expectations with a new definition. Jesus was in the temple, and his mother and brothers came to speak to him. When the people told him his family was asking for Him, He gave a startling—some might even say rude—response:
While he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him. But he replied to the man who told him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
In that moment Jesus redefined “family”. “Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” Implicit in this definition is the promise that when our family forsakes us because they love darkness rather than the light, He gives us new family in Him. Jesus explained this reality further when Peter said to him,
“See, we have left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first” (Mk. 10:28–31).
We may feel disappointed, sad, conflicted, even angry or depressed as Mother’s Day approaches, but we can know that our Father has promised to give us true family in Jesus.
What are we to do?
I know, the promise of spiritual family doesn’t seem to take care of all the hurts and disappointments we feel when we look at the “real” families into which many of us were born.
Those of us who have left Adventism all understand deep losses of identity, social contacts—even of jobs and family. Many of us understand the even deeper loss of realizing that God allowed us to be born to mothers or fathers who were unsafe and abusive.
How are we to proceed once we know Jesus and realize clearly the nature of the losses and scars that shaped us?
Again, the answer is in God’s word. He has faithfully told us the truth about our lives.
First, we can know this: God has revealed that each of us is exactly who He wanted us to be. He sovereignly formed us out of the gene pools of the parents who bore us. Read these remarkable words in Psalm 139:13–16:
For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
In God’s sovereignty, He knew and planned each of us. He gave us the birth parents we had because He wanted US. He gave us the combination of genes and DNA that He chose for us because He wanted who we would be.
Second, we are to thank Him for who He is and for what He is doing. In other words, when we realize that our parents were not who we hoped they might be, or when our children disappoint us, our command is to trust God and thank Him—even if we have to thank Him for what He is doing that we cannot yet see. He does not ask us to fix our family; He asks us to trust Him.
Romans 1:20-21 is an amazing passage. In fact, we might almost miss it if we are reading casually, yet these words explain the heart of unbelief:
For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Did you see that? The difference between those who trust God and those who don’t is thanking God and honoring Him as God. The evidence of His eternal power and divine nature are visible to everyone, yet unbelievers refuse to acknowledge Him or thank Him.
Reality is bigger than we are; God sees what we cannot see. He keeps His promises, and our “job” is to trust Him and thank Him even when our lives look bleak.
Therefore, when our lives fall apart, when father or mother, brother or sister betray us or cruelly treat us, we can know that the Lord will redeem our losses and pain because He keeps His word.
Third, we may have to face a disillusioning reality: God may not fix our problem the way it seems He should. Our true Father may allow an earthly parent or loved one to reject us or to leave us through death. He may not restore relationships that were dangerous. He will, however, walk with us through those dark valleys of loss, and He asks us to trust Him because “those whom He loves, He disciplines” (Heb. 12:6). As Job said, the Lord gives and takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord (see Job 1:21). Sometimes the Lord allows us to lose people we long to love because He is providing His own love and care for us through people who trust Him.
When Jesus said those who do the will of His Father are his mother, brothers, and sisters, he redefined family for those who know Him. Our Father is faithful.
If our Father removes loved ones from our lives, He brings people to us who will love us for Him.
This Mother’ s Day I thank God for His eternal purpose in knowing me and calling me to be His, for forming me from the parents to whom I was born. I thank Him for giving me children to love—children He formed from other gene pools than mine, but children He has given me for our mutual good and for His glory.
Finally, I thank God for making me part of His family in Jesus, for the new birth which makes me truly His and truly the sibling of the brothers and sisters in Christ He has placed in my life. †
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