This is my first Mothers’ Day as an orphan. My father died in 1991; my mother last October. Fathers Day was really hard after my dad died. For years I hated to see the racks of Fathers’ Day cards – but since my dh and i had kids of our own, I still had to look at them to pick one out for my him. With my mom gone, I don’t have to look at cards.

I’m glad for that. Getting a card had long been something of a conundrum. I could always find a good funny card, and mostly that’s what I went to. It’s not that I wouldn’t have liked to get something more sweet and sentimental, but I most of the time I couldn’t find one that felt, well, honest. The mom of the Mothers’ Day card world is perfect. She always said the right thing at just the right time. She was always available and always had time for you and would do anything for you. She was always patient and loving and kind. She was always wise and knew just what to say, and when to say it, and how to say it. She always believed in you and encouraged you. She was steadfast, solid, a rock to cling to. She taught you all the right things. Always. Always. Always.

I wasn’t comfortable sending one of those Odes to the Perfect Mother to my mom, because we both knew that she hadn’t, in fact, always been like that. In fact, on some of those points, she was hardly ever like that. She often told me she felt uncomfortable being praised as being the mom she knew she wasn’t. She wanted to be loved for being the mother she was, warts and all. Hallmark just doesn’t seem to make cards like that much, which is too bad.

Celebrating motherhood shouldn’t be about creating some unrealistic, sentimental, mom-ideal image for us to pay homage to. Mothers’ Day should be about honoring moms as they are. What was most amazing about my mother wasn’t that she was perfect; it was what God was able to do through her in spite of her imperfections. Looking at my own bipolar life, it is nothing short of a miracle to me that all five of my kids still love me and think I’m worth celebrating – and, again, that’s not because of ME, but because of what God is able to accomplish in spite of the material we give Him to work with.

THAT’s the most amazing thing about being a mom: God doesn’t need us to be perfect. Grace is all about God using our imperfection to show off HIS perfection. Our kids don’t need perfect moms – they need to see God’s perfect grace. No matter how short we fall, we can never be awful enough that God’s grace cannot reach our children.

On this Mothers’ Day, may God’s grace shine into the lives of ALL moms: Moms who have it all together. Moms who can’t remember where they last saw it. Moms who never had it in the first place. Moms who are patient and kind and never raise their voice. Moms who are in a hurry and who sometime yell at their kids. Moms who find great joy in parenting, and moms who find parenting overwhelming. Moms who are frayed and frazzled and frumpy, and moms who would look at home on the front page of Parenting.
Whatever their situations, however close or short of the mothering ideal they fall, may God bless their every effort for good.