You Were Happy to Be Mom; Six Reasons to Arise and Bless Her

. . . Yet even when our mothers have failed us, we typically have something to be thankful for — and not just virtues that overlap with Dad’s, but qualities that were specific signs of her motherly femininity. What might you say to Mom this year? Consider a few ways you might honor her as mother. At least, here are six specifics for my own mother. Perhaps a few apply for you, and the others could inspire you of your own ways to honor Mom as Mom.  . . .

Desiring God

"This Sunday is not Father’s Day. And Father’s Day is not Parent’s Day. In God’s common kindness, on the second Sunday of May, at least in the United States, we honor mothers.

"Even though we often praise our parents for generic virtues that could be true of either — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control — it is also fitting to give thought to what it means to honor a mother as mother. What makes Mom a good mom (and not a dad)?

"Of course, no earthly mother is perfect. Many, if not most, have obvious flaws, and clearly some are manifestly worse than others. And as great as the stakes are in fatherly failures and fatherlessness, perhaps the absence or failures of mothers prove to be all the more devasting, and difficult to recover from. Why? Because of God’s particular design and distinct calling on mothers as mothers in those earliest days, months, and years of our lives.

"Yet even when our mothers have failed us, we typically have something to be thankful for — and not just virtues that overlap with Dad’s, but qualities that were specific signs of her motherly femininity.

"What might you say to Mom this year? Consider a few ways you might honor her as mother. At least, here are six specifics for my own mother. Perhaps a few apply for you, and the others could inspire you of your own ways to honor Mom as Mom." . . .

David Mathis (@davidcmathis) is executive editor for desiringGod.org and pastor at Cities Church in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is a husband, father of four, and author of Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines.