Walking With Christ

Proverbs 31:28-31  (28)Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her:  (29)“Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.”  (30)Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.  (31)Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates.(ESV)

Mother’s Day isn’t about pretending mothers are perfect.  It’s about refusing to let the ordinary sacrifices of faithful mothers go unnamed.

There are some kinds of love that are so constant they become easy to overlook.  The meals, the reminders, the late nights, the quiet worries, the corrected attitudes, the washed clothes, the packed lunches, the prayers whispered when no one else is awake, and the thousand little acts of care that hold a home together often disappear into the background because they happen so often.

But ordinary doesn’t mean small.

Much of motherhood is hidden work.  It isn’t always dramatic.  It doesn’t always announce itself.  It’s love repeated until it becomes part of the structure of someone else’s life.

A mother remembers things no one else remembers.  She remembers the favorite blanket.  The first fever.  The look on her child’s face when something hurt.  The food they loved for three weeks and suddenly refused to eat ever again.  The fear behind the attitude.  The child they were before the world started calling them grown.

And even when her children grow older, some part of her keeps carrying all those earlier versions too.

That’s a strange and beautiful kind of love.

It’s not always clean.  It’s not always calm.  It’s not always patient.  Mothers get tired.  Mothers get frustrated.  Mothers have moments they wish they could do again.  But love isn’t proven by never being weary.  Love is often proven by continuing to show up after weariness has already arrived.

That’s why Scripture says her children rise up and call her blessed.  Not because they finally noticed every single thing she did.  They probably never will.  No child fully understands the cost of being loved that way while they’re still receiving it.

But eventually, if grace gives them eyes to see, they begin to understand.

They begin to realize that the things they thought were just “normal” were actually gifts.

The food on the table wasn’t magic.
The clean clothes weren’t automatic.
The comfort after heartbreak wasn’t owed.
The correction wasn’t cruelty.
The boundaries weren’t hatred.
The prayers weren’t wasted.
The presence wasn’t small.

Love was working.

Love was remembering.

Love was staying.

Today is a day to honor that.

Not only the grand moments.  Not only the picture-worthy moments.  Not only the moments that fit neatly into a card.

Today is for the tired hands.
The interrupted sleep.
The unseen tears.
The fierce prayers.
The gentle words.
The hard corrections.
The quiet endurance.
The work that formed lives one ordinary day at a time.

A woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.

Not flattered.  Not idolized.  Praised.

There’s a difference.

Flattery exaggerates.  Praise tells the truth.

So today, let the truth be spoken plainly:  Mothers who love their children are worthy of honor.

Give her the fruit of her hands.

Let her works praise her in the gates.

Let her children call her blessed while she can still hear it.  Let her husband praise her without making her earn every word.  Let the people who benefited from her love stop long enough to say what should have been said sooner.

Thank you.

Thank you for staying.
Thank you for remembering.
Thank you for carrying what no one else saw.
Thank you for loving in ways that didn’t always get noticed.
Thank you for the prayers, the patience, the warnings, the meals, the hugs, the lessons, the laughter, and the tears.

Thank you for the love that became so steady we were tempted to call it ordinary.

It was never ordinary.

It was a gift.

And today, we honor it.