Mother’s Day in the Waiting

If you find yourself thinking, “Wow, this Mother’s Day is absolutely perfect” you can stop reading. I’m writing this to those of us “in the waiting.” Mother’s Day is a wonderful day to celebrate, but sometimes, it’s a mixed bag.

A lot of items in that mixed bag are let-down expectations. 

I expected to be remembered. 

I expected to be a mother. 

I expected to not be alone this year.   

These statements are among the many reasons why people “in the waiting” avoid church and social media today and similar days of remembrance. Let down expectations can feel like a hope that is dying.  

Dear friend, I offer you a verse that carried us through waiting seasons.  

And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. —Romans 5:3-5

We can have hope even in the waiting, because of God’s love in our hearts. We don’t rely on circumstances and experiences to determine our identity. Therefore, we can stand secure in God’s love and the hope it brings even on the most lonely of days.

My family and I live and serve in Tanzania. As I write this post, we are having a lovely day. We went to the beach where we searched for rocks and beach glass. I couldn’t swim because of the local folks lining the sand holding a video camera to document the white woman wearing a Walmart special bathing suit! My adopted daughter picked up broken tiles and beach glass, pieces of old bottles, garbage really. She called these forgotten things beautiful, and so that’s what they became. She said, “these are for my collection.”  

It was a beautiful reminder to look for the beauty in the broken because it gives purpose to the waiting.  

Maybe in the waiting we can hold on to the hope that God’s love is enough for us. Maybe we can believe that God loves to take broken things and call them Beautiful. Maybe we can even see ourselves as more than broken or disappointed. Maybe this hope will offer a glimpse of the purpose of suffering, of the waiting.  

I have so much more to say and learn about what to do with the waiting. I know that the Lord meets us in this place, and is making us into God’s own even more beautiful daughters.