You don’t need me to tell you that Mother’s Day is complicated for many. A two-second pause to contemplate the people in your life for whom the holiday might be painful would yield evidence enough that the day (and the church-backed events that it often brings) can be tricky. Instead, maybe we can ask why is that so?

My hunch is that the labyrinth of emotions accompanying this holiday has to do with the elevation and highlighting of a very specific relationship. And relationships are layered, sometimes strained, always unique. They are formed between people, and no two people are alike. A day to “celebrate mothers” feels not altogether different from declaring a day to “celebrate health.” Can you imagine? The pain that would come from those whose bodies have received diagnoses? From those who have learned from their faith communities to not trust their physical selves? From those trapped inside of addiction, or those raging against the institutions that compromise our wellness, or those who have been traumatized by diet culture? Health is complicated because it has to do with a relationship between a person and their body. “Celebrating health” would be an oversimplification of such a complex human experience.

So too with mothers.

Here’s a Mother’s Day litany that is also simplified for such vastly different connections and experiences that surround us. But, I hope it makes a little more room for a few more people.

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Needed: A candle and lighter, something to represent bread and wine for communion (a cracker and juice, toast and milk, etc), and a little cup of dirt (plus a seed, if available). If reading with people, one voice will read all unbolded sections while the group joins in for the bolded sections.

“If ever there is a tomorrow when we’re not together, there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we are apart, I will always be with you.” –Winnie the Pooh

ONE: Right now, we push aside all the feelings we “should” have and people we “should” be, and we open wide our doors to what is

ALL: Welcome, old grief; 

Welcome, new reality; 

Welcome, fear; 

Welcome, worry; 

Welcome, exactly who we are right now

ONE: As we light this candle, we declare this space for remembering and honoring the children and parents we miss during Mother’s (and/or Father’s) day(s)

ALL: Be with us, saints; 

Be with us, Spirit

Song: Let It Be

ONE: For children who had to say goodbye to parents when they should have had so much more time

ALL: We hold you now: (name any names aloud)

ONE: For children who have watched the minds and bodies of parents deteriorate, no longer able to recognize or remember

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For children whose parents were unable to offer their presence or resources, children who ached to know a different kind of paternal or maternal love

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For children who have lost parents to suicide, disease, estrangement

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For children who wrestle with the complexities of their birth parents, adoptive parents, and foster parents

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For children who are navigating the milestones of life without their mothers or fathers there to call for recipes and family histories and old stories that have faded with years

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For LGBTQIA+ children who do not have homes to which they can return

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For children who were abused in a multitude of ways:

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For children who dread the holidays because of their voids

ALL: We hold you now:

Scripture: Matthew 5:1-12

ONE: For parents who birthed babies straight into the arms of God

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For parents who have lost young children to disasters that make this life seem too unfair for the human heart

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For parents who have raised their grandchildren or other relatives because of a lost life or reality

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For parents who have lost children to suicide, disease, estrangement

ALL: We hold you now: 

ONE: For parents whose children were unable to offer their presence or connection, parents who ached to know a different kind of familial love

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For parents who have received a gutting diagnosis

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For parents who are raising children, and working jobs, and running households by themselves

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For birth parents who wrestle with the complexities of hard decisions and limited resources

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For adoptive and foster parents who wrestle with the complexities of hard questions, identity narratives, and ethics

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For migrant and refugee parents who are risking everything (even separation) for a better life for their children

ALL: We hold you now:

“If I had lost a leg—I would tell them—instead of a boy, no one would ever ask me if I was ‘over’ it. They would ask me how I was doing learning to walk without my leg. I was learning to walk and to breathe and to live without Wade. And what I was learning is that it was never going to be the life I had before.” –Elizabeth Edwards

ONE: To those who are not biological parents, but who step in to mother and father so many around them

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To those who chose not to be parents in a culture that so often pressures otherwise

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To those who would choose to be parents, or parents again, but who grieve the loss of a dream

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To those who have redefined family to go past lines of biology, nationality, and economics

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To those who did the best they could with what they had when they had it

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To those versions of ourselves that we never turned into, and the versions of ourselves that we did

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To the voices we wish we could hear say “Happy Mother’s and Father’s Day”

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To the ears to which we wish we could say “Happy Mother’s and Father’s Day”

ALL: We honor you now:

Scripture: John 1:5

“Sorry, but you don’t really get a choice—you keep waking up and you keep breathing and your heart keeps on beating. And because your blood hasn’t stopped moving through your body, your stomach gets hungry, and then your mouth eats. This is how it goes. Your sad little heart becomes a force of nature. Despite the depth of its wounds, it just keeps going and then the rest of your body has to follow. You eat. You sleep. You sit, and stand, and walk. You smile. Eventually, you laugh. It’s like your heart knows that if it keeps going, so will you. And your heart hasn’t forgotten how good it is to be in the world, so it pushes on, propelling you along to the fridge, the shower, a family dinner, coffee with a friend. In doing these things, your spirit catches up with what your heart already knows; it’s pretty good to be alive. I guess what I’m getting at is that if you too are mired in the early days of unimaginable loss, the only thing to do is follow your heart. Then listen to your body. And keep…going.” –Jamie Wright 

Song: Great is Thy Faithfulness

ONE: Hear our words to those we miss

ALL: Meet us in our celebration and in our grief 

Communion

ONE: The body of Mary’s son, broken for us

The blood of God’s son, poured out for the world

ALL: Thank you Jesus for the bigger picture of resurrection

ONE: God’s family table is open to all who wish to partake, in your homes, on these screens, though separated we are one.

(Participants hold cup of soil—and a seed if possible—in their hands.)

Remind us, God, that our faith makes room for death, that our faith can hold endings, though they are excruciating and devastating.

(Participants push seeds into dirt.)

Remind us that in a backwards kingdom, end is beginning, last is first, and burial is birth…eventually.

ALL: Thank you for love that was, is, and is to come. Amen.

Go now in the peace that passes our understanding.

I read Brio magazine articles that emphasized the importance of sexual purity and lifted up anti-abortion warriors. I listened to Focus on the Family with my parents because that’s what they were listening to on the radio. I wrote a passionate argumentative speech my senior year for my speech class and was persuasive enough to earn an “A” from my unpersuaded pro-choice teacher.

For the first 18 years of my life, the abortion question was simple. The sex question was simple. God said to save sex for marriage, sex created babies, and if you got pregnant you simply needed to go through nine months of pregnancy and give up your baby for adoption if you could not handle the pressures of becoming a mother.

Then my freshman seminar professor at my moderately conservative Christian university rocked my world when she admitted to my class of purity culture indoctrinated 18-year-olds that she had taken one of her best friends to get an abortion when they were college students.

I respected her. I adored her. I wanted to be like her.

READ: We Go There: Abortion

And suddenly I realized that maybe, just maybe, I didn’t understand just how complicated everything surrounding the issue of abortion, and women’s health wasn’t quite as simple as I had believed for most of my childhood.

As I moved into adulthood my views on life and abortion became all the more complicated as I came to understand both the value of all human life and the complex nature of modern science and the processes of life we all experienced from the point of conception. The Terri Schaivo case gained steam and national attention shortly after my husband and I married. It forced us as young 20-somethings to confront our own mortality and discuss what we would want from each other if we were in the same position.

I made it clear to my new husband, who was looking forward to children and decades growing old together, that I fully expected him to let me go if I was ever in the same position. Modern science has improved our lives and saved those who even 50 years ago would have lived short existences. But if modern science couldn’t save the woman he married, then I wanted him to let nature take its course.

Dark stuff, I know.

Over time, for me the abortion issue became about far more than just the ending of an innocent life. My own struggle with infertility and pregnancy, and the struggles of my friends, taught me just how complicated the world of childbearing actually is. For the first time I didn’t just see the struggles of a helpless little one to survive, but the physical, mental, and emotional struggles of the women who choose to give those little ones life. I learned that first trimester ultrasounds were not as simple as putting a little jelly on the belly, that laws requiring rape victims to have an ultrasound before an abortion did in fact mean an uncomfortably invasive procedure which could cause additional emotional trauma. And as I watched friends struggle through the pain of losing their unborn children, it both challenged me to ask how a woman could make that choice and forced me to realize that regardless of the reason and the aftermath, the decision to end a pregnancy was neither easy or painless.

I became increasingly frustrated by both the legitimate love and concern for the unborn and the complete denial of the reasons why women choose abortion in the first place. I started to see the reactive nature of the actions of anti-abortion groups with little discussion about actual prevention and the preventative argument of the pro-choice groups with no discussion of the life being ended. With friends on both sides of the debate, I began to see the legitimate arguments and harmful ignorance on both sides.

I also came to see that if the belief that all life was precious from the womb to the tomb, then the life of the unborn could not be our only concern. If we truly believed that God was the creator of all, if we truly believed that Jesus called us to love our neighbor, then we couldn’t ignore all the ways “life” was challenged in our country.

If we say the chronically ill babies deserve a chance at life, then we also have to care about their parents having access to affordable health care options to care for them. If we care about healthy babies, then we need to acknowledge the difficulties women of color face related to maternal health care and the infant mortality rates that plague their children. If we want to end the destructive cycles that keep families in poverty, threatening their health and ability to provide generational care, then we need to do what we can to lift their babies out of poverty, ending the cycle and benefiting all of society. If we believe that all children need a loving environment, then we cannot prevent LGTBQ couples from providing loving and financially secure homes for the many children in our country desperate for stability and emotional security.

And I finally came to see that a Christ-centered pro-life ethic wasn’t just about abortion.

It was about lifting up the work of anti-racism, reformation of the justice system, humane treatment of refugees and migrants, an immigration system that is both compassionate and just, protections for the lives and safety of our LGTBQ friends and family, a health care system that works for all Americans, and so much more.

I’m ready to leave behind the language and baggage of the pro-life movement to explore a politically unattached whole-life ethic. I’ve stopped looking to parties to solve problems and the promises of individuals. I’m looking to the selfless actions of people and groups who have dedicated themselves to the work of helping others and robust discussion of policy instead of unforgiving laws. I want to see “pro-life” become a way of life as opposed to a buzz word, to see it focus on making a healthy and robust life from womb to tomb possible instead of just a roll of the dice.

Because if we really believe that all life is a precious gift from the Creator, we need to start acting like it.

“God brought us together.”

“It was God’s will for you to join our family.”

Have you ever said things like this to your adopted child? For adoptees like me—growing up in Christian circles where adoption is often presented as biblically sanctioned and as abortion’s golden opposite—these blessing statements are often enthusiastically shared—both directly with adoptees and with others when our adoption stories are told.

While you’re likely speaking your sincere truth, and while God certainly may have lent a divine hand in bringing you and your child together, this kind of spiritual-speak can be dangerous. As someone who grew up hearing these messages again and again, I’m warning you that it could erode your parent-child relationship—and possibly your child’s belief in a loving God.

As a child, my journey with this started when I was a seven-year-old, following a huge yellow and black veined butterfly all over my front yard. Sadly, my butterfly friend was hit by a car. I stayed by her side as she suffered and ultimately died. As an adoptee prone to sensing and feeling anguish, I felt the butterfly’s death so deeply I thought that I, too, might die.

My mom didn’t know how to console me, especially as I spent days mired in tears and grief. She figured the best way was through church—and the promise of heaven.

Only, it was my mom who was consoled and transformed into a full-fledged “born-again Christian.” She dove in big—first with a Mothers of Preschoolers group, then by starting a neighborhood Bible study.

“It’s because of Sara that I found God,” my mom would boast to her friends and religious cohorts. Sooner or later, she’d launch into a re-telling of my butterfly story, which became a public talk she gave over and over throughout my life. Thanks to adoption, my mom was given the blessing of a child who led her to her loving Savior.

People delighted in my mom’s beautiful story of a double blessing. But there was a long-term cost when it came to our mother-daughter relationship. There was also a cost to my faith.

While children are undeniably blessings, being overly effusive about “God’s divine plans” when it comes to adoption discounts the very real loss for adoptees and first/birth families—as if only one family’s triumph is what matters to God, as if the lifelong consequences for adoptees and first/birth families don’t matter.

Anytime we look past loss and grief in order to center ourselves in a story, we’re presenting an overly simplistic, and oppressive, view of religion. Touting “God brought us together” is the equivalent of saying, “Your tragedy is God’s will for my own benefit.” I’d even argue that declaring God’s very mysterious will with strong authority could violate the third commandment: “God won’t put up with the irreverent use of his name.” (Exodus 20:7 MSG)

READ: Adoption Lament

What’s more, for adoptees—already prone to feeling unworthy from the moment of relinquishment no matter how wonderful the circumstances are in our adoptive homes—this presentation of God’s preference reinforces our tendency toward flawed thinking. It becomes more proof that we are broken, unwanted, insignificant. We’re already inclined to silently hold on to this pain and feel ashamed. Feeling that God is all about our adoptive parents, and we’re merely a tool to bring them joy, fulfillment, and family, can reinforce a belief that we don’t matter, further silence us, and alienate us from the God our faithful parents are desiring to point us toward.

This alienation is not entirely the result of religious messaging, to be fair. Adoption, by its very nature, can lead adoptees to question God. Nancy Newton Verrier, an adoptive mother and psychotherapist focused on separation and loss in adoption, has referred to a common experience for adoptees in infancy where “the overall feeling is a betrayal of the universe, of God, of the cosmos, of the infinite being. This was not supposed to happen,” Verrier writes. “It is outside the realm of the natural order of life.”

Adoption is not natural—and we gloss over this with heavy leaning on spiritual speak. An infant is not supposed to be separated from the mother whose womb brought forth life. Isn’t that at the heart of the pro-life argument?

It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that so many adopted children raised in the Christian faith run from it as adults. Similar dissonance that adoptees notice in widespread religious messaging around adoption is real:

• God takes sides, and it’s not mine.
• Premarital sex is a sin, but it may also be God’s will to bring a baby to a family in need.
• We can be sure of God’s will when it suits, because it couldn’t be God’s will for anyone to struggle with infertility and not have a child.
• Adoption is the answer to abortion, but pro-life isn’t as important when it comes to the historical and still prevalent use of corruption, coercion, and racism that can factor into adoption.

My private adoption happened to be the result of coercion. My adoptive mom had a hint that something wasn’t right about the circumstances surrounding my adoption, but she wanted a baby so badly she didn’t ask questions.

Knowing that she was a good person, I have come to understand that she wouldn’t have been able to live with herself if she thought she’d taken another mother’s baby. She had to believe that my adoption was divinely arranged. Once I realized this, the spiritual-speak began to make a lot of sense.

Similarly, once I understood God in my own way, apart from religious justification, I could see that God always cared deeply about me as an adoptee. There was a holy hand looking out for me in my adoptive family. But I’ve come to understand that same divine presence would have been there had I stayed with my first/birth family, too.

I share all of this not to make you feel wrong for adopting—nor for fiercely loving your child and saying so. But rather, I say it out of a sincere hope that adoptive parents will steer away from the blessing language to be more honoring to adoptees and to God.

“Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven.” (James 1:17 MSG) Children are no exception, no matter how they come to your family.

Thank God for the child who has blessed your life—but keep it private, remembering that adoption is always more nuanced than simplistic religious language can possibly convey.

Every time other powerful men send out this sympathetic tweet: As a father of daughters …

Somehow the focus always remains on those who’ve been abused. As if somehow we think the onus is on women to stop it. As if somehow this terror, this scourge of sexual abuse and sexual harassment affects only women, only daughters — and does not traumatize and destroy the very fabric of our being: our families, our relationships, and our nation.

READ: ‘Because #MeToo Breaks My Heart, Makes Me Pissed As Hell’

This past week, maybe like you, I posted #MeToo on social media, admitting, however shamefully, that I too had encountered sexual harassment. (As a former sportswriter and current pastor — two male-dominated professions — this can’t be terribly surprising).

I didn’t tell my stories. I didn’t even want to remember the details, though they flooded back in snapshots, seconds, sayings, feelings of fear, and upset stomach.

And no, nothing happened to me like what happened to many of the women who found themselves alone in a hotel room with Harvey Weinstein or any of the men listed above. I feel as though I have to say that, so no one will look at me differently or wonder secretly if I’ve been somehow tainted. And isn’t that horrific: that the biggest shame, fear, and ostracism we reserve not for abusers but for those whom they abuse.

Even as I post #MeToo, I sense the shame in myself to somehow separate myself from the embarrassment of sexual harassment or abuse…

I mean, #MeToo, but I’m fine. I’m great. It didn’t matter. I expected it. It came with the territory: the locker rooms, the fields, the churches. It’s the price I paid. I never said anything. I ignored everything, and I kept my guard up and kept doing my job. I mean there was that one time, but that was my fault too. Let’s not make this about me. 

It’s awful, right? This pervasive fear of being outed not as an abuser but as someone who has experienced it. I am so grateful for the community of women online and the sharing of #MeToo, but it still doesn’t feel entirely safe, does it?

As long as we keep focusing on naming women and talking about daughters, we miss the point.

It’s time for men to be named. For men to say #MeToo…I committed sexual harassment.

That tweet: As a father of daughters…

I mean, I’m grateful. Thanks for caring. I suppose it’s preferable to much of the instruction I received at the hands of some churches: Watch how you dress. How you act. What you wear. What you say. Modesty is your responsibility. Guys can’t help themselves.

So teenage girls go get birth control and HPV vaccines, and teenage boys play video games and watch violent porn.

Changing a pervasive culture of sexual assault is not up to men with daughters.

So I’m a mother of sons. Here’s my response:

As a mother of two sons, I am horrified by the epidemic of sexual abuse and sexual harassment perpetrated by successful, prominent American men. As a mother of two sons, I will tell my sons that stopping sexual assault and harassment is up to them: not up to girls and women.

I will insist that no one has to do what my sons want them to do simply because my sons are in a position of power: being fairly affluent, white, able-bodied young men. I will insist that my sons realize that women are every bit as competent as men, that women can do what men can do, and that the ideas of prescribed roles for men and women are social constructs. My sons may see many traditional roles happen in our family, where I have a flexible work arrangement and am home with them many days, while their dad leaves every morning for the office downtown. I will remind my boys that those roles are a choice, and that the choice to care for others is a valuable and worthwhile choice, one which does not demean or lessen the one who chooses it. 

My husband and I will correct our boys if they make disrespectful comments about women or girls. We will foster their friendships with girls, and we will let them see mommy and daddy having many platonic relationships with people of the opposite sex, including lunches and dinners with coworkers, mentors, and friends of the opposite sex, without even considering a sexual side to these meetings.

We will teach our boys that being sensitive is OK, even when I find myself cringing at my oldest son’s deep well of emotion. 

We will attempt to keep our sons from valuing toxic masculinity, which keeps them sealed off from their emotions and encourages them to act out in violent or insensitive ways.

As a mother of two sons, I will not be surprised if I hear that my son mistreats a woman or a girl, or if my son is involved in sexual harassment. I will remember that even though he is my beloved son, he is also a product of his culture, and I will care for the women and girls, and I will not attempt to discredit their truth, even if it harms my son.

As a mother of two sons who is also a Christian, I will teach my boys the witness of Jesus. Jesus, who had many female friends and many platonic relationships with women. Jesus, who prevented a woman from being stoned by reminding all present of their own (greater) sins. Jesus, who chose to first protect persons and then uphold the law. Jesus, who must have been thinking of the many oppressed women of his day, when he warned against mistreating “the little ones” among us and said that those who did should be drowned in the sea.

I will teach my sons that feminine beauty runs deep and that feminine beauty exists in and of itself, not merely as something that was created for males. 

I will teach my sons to speak out when they recognize sexual harassment, because every woman matters. Not because they have a mom. Not because they once loved a woman – but because every woman matters because women are people – just like my sons.

This article was adapted from Angela’s new blog.