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A Message About Faith On Mother’s Day

On Mother’s Day, it was pouring. Downpour – torrential rain. Ok, I’m exaggerating. But it certainly felt like it. The entire weekend felt like one big water leak and that made for a pretty slow Sunday morning.

My husband ran out and got me my morning tea. Well, he got me three of them. I’m still drinking them all. 90 ounces of black tea takes a while to consume. LOL!

But despite the weather, we managed to make it to church. I’m not sure why weather would have deterred us anyway. We try our hardest to go every week. We only miss if I am out of town or if someone is really sick.

Otherwise, you will find us somewhere in the back, all crammed in a pew, trying to keep the kids quiet. Our children don’t quite understand yet that they should be quiet in church. That’s fun.

And I love going to church. I really do. I live a high-stressed, highly frazzled life. One that I am trying to unravel and recreate. One that I am trying to redefine. Unsuccessfully, but nevertheless, the effort is being made.

A Message About Faith On Mother’s Day

I’m trying to learn new things and shift things around and join a different lane and you know what? It isn’t freaking easy when you are known for something unique. But I swim upstream 7 days a week and it breaks me in half 7 days a week because I know what my 5-year plan is and my eye is on that prize.

So, church is important to me. Because through all the chaos and the madness and the confusion that I am forcing upon myself, church is stable. It is a constant. It is a safe zone. It is quiet. It is simple. It is forgiving. It is not judgemental.

It doesn’t expect anything of me. It just listens and receives and if I am being honest with you, gives more than it takes.

And I need something that gives more than it takes right now because everything around me is sucking me dry. When I feel like I need a break, I know where to turn to.

So, once a week, we get in the car and we go to church and we listen to our pastor and I usually cry as I sit in the back and I absorb all his words and I take all the goodness in and I’m reminded that everything I am going through is nothing.

It’s nothing. The stress. The chaos. The anger. The confusion. The exhaustion. The resentment. It’s nothing and it will pass because it’s not my life. It’s just a song that I’m listening to and it’s almost over.

Then when mass is over, I leave and I feel empty. But not empty in a bad way. Empty in the most glorious of ways. I’ve left all my anxiety and hurt and hate and sadness and confusion inside the church. He took it from me. I leave empty and whole.

And Sundays are my favorite because, for a few hours each week, I remember what it feels like to be me again – before all the boulders were thrown on my shoulders.

This Mothers’ Day mass, something special was said and it really resonated with me. My pastor said that faith was a gift that was handed down to you. Most people who go to church were taught the faith by someone they loved.

At first, I dismissed his idea because my mother stopped believing when I was 7 – a young child. We stopped going to church when I was a kid. But then I realized that she kept me in Catholic School until I went to college and I lived with my grandmother who was – and still is – very religious.

So, while I might not have had said dinner prayers and attended Sunday mass, I did have some form of belief instilled in me. And that foundation eventually led me to a path which brought me to my new church. If I didn’t have that education, would I have been open to this new group of people in my late 30s? Probably not.

So, yes, in some sense, my faith was taught to me – by school and by members of my family. The pastor said that the greatest gifts a parent can give to their children are love and faith. And as I looked over to my children standing and talking in the pew – oh how I want to kill them sometimes – I realized that I was building a foundation for them.

Without even thinking about it. It just was our lives. I wasn’t thinking about what I was doing for their future or their children. I was just thinking about Sunday.

And that just struck me so very hard. There are more old people than young in the church. I don’t have to tell you that. As I looked around the church, I could count on two hands the teenagers that were in the space. Limited.

Most were off playing sports or sleeping in or literally doing anything but being where we were. But, there we were. Together. Building faith – teaching our children that God is a part of their lives and to never forget it.

It was a truly special Mother’s Day gift indeed.

I live in a strange world. I was probably expected to post a photo shoot for Mother’s Day on IG. Balloons and matching outfits. Unicorns and lilies. Fireworks and superhero capes. But I don’t have it in me anymore. I really don’t and I don’t know what that means for any of this. I’m trying to hold onto everything, but it’s hard.

For Mother’s Day, I wore jeggings and didn’t do my hair. The kids wore regular clothes and we took our pictures in a basement with horrible lighting. We had a great day and I didn’t worry about what it looked like or what it would look like today.

My Mothers’ Day was perfect because it was mine. The gift was God and God is good all the time.

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