Mother’s Day 2008 was highly emotional. Our family was so close – SO CLOSE – to having our son’s international adoption approved. Birthdays and Christmases had passed, but I held out hope of having him home for Mother’s Day.

That was not God’s will for our son’s life. Instead he spent another Mother’s Day with his doting foster mom in his beautiful birth country. Tears swallowed my eyes as I looked down our church pew and noted, despite three shiny faces smiling back at me, “the empty spot”. I longed to hold our youngest child close and to have all of my family under one roof, but I submitted to God’s plan.
 
Mother’s Day 2009 was highly emotional. Our family took up a whole small row in the back of our church. I looked down the pew and saw four shiny faces smiling back at me. God had filled the empty spot in His own time. This time the tears were for someone else – a mother who will spend every Mother’s Day thinking about “the empty spot”.
 
Sharing Mother’s Day is a deliberate choice for me. This is not a selfless act (truly, my sin nature sometimes whispers, “This is your day”). This is the simple reality that one of my children has more than one mother – a woman I may never meet but who is never far from my thoughts.
 
mami, mommy
i pray you always love her
and hope you love me too, for
 
she felt your fluttery kicks
as you were formed in her womb
she heard your lusty cries
on the First Day of Your Life
(which was actually the middle of the night)
and stroked your newborn flesh
and i will never know that moment
          (and that makes me cry)
 
now i witness your wild football kicks
as you grow into a tireless toddler
i hear you cry in glee, in pain, in sorrow
Each Day of Your Life
(which hopefully spans decades)
and caress your tiny earlobes
and she will never know these moments
          (and that makes me cry too)
 
she made a life choice for you,
          did the best she could with what she had
                   and it may not be Perfect in your eyes
but it is what it is and the roots of It are
          love, true love
 
so i make life choices for you now
          do the best i can with what i have
                   and i am surely far from Perfect in your eyes
but it is what it is and the roots of It are
          love, true love
 
we are the same, the two of us,
          your mami, your mommy
 
we love you     effortlessly
intentionally
ferociously
protectively
tenderly
hopefully
          completely differently
and exactly the same
 
but most importantly,
          we love you
simultaneously.
 
one does not pick up where the other left off,
but together we love you, and if we, by God’s grace,
can rest in the privilege of knowing your love in return,
 
well… we may not be Perfect in anyone’ s eyes
but It is enough.