On the one hand, we are eternally grateful for the children we have, for the blessing they are in our lives. On the other hand though, Mother's Day only serves to highlight the lack in our lives - the missing children; the ones we have lost to death, the ones we long to have but can't.
Sitting in church on Sunday morning, I was struck by the fact that most of life is lived between two camps.
A friend adopted a beautiful girl several years ago. For her, Mother's Day is a day to celebrate the fact that she has this beautiful child n her life, but it is also a day of great sadness, thinking about the tragedy that made it necessary for the birth mother to give her child up for adoption. It is also a day of sadness for her, being aced, yet again, with her own inability to be pregnant and give birth.
Another friend is single, and longs for a husband and children of her own. She celebrated the gift her own mother is to her, but weeps that (as yet) God has not chosen to bless her with children of her own.
Then there is the mother whose adult son, a member of our congregation, was tragically shot and killed in a mugging over the weekend. For her, Mother's Day will always be linked to her son's murder....
There is my own story, of nearly losing one child, and then losing the next one, because of a disease I didn't know I had, until it was too late. As a child, I also have two mothers - my birth mother, who raised me and loves me and is an awesome woman; and my step-mother, who loves me despite the fact that for years I thought she was the cause of my parents' divorce.
For all of us, and for so many more, life is this dichotomy, joy and pain, laughter and tears, celebration and mourning. Yet, in the midst of it all, there is God.
Losing my child was the most difficult road I have ever had to walk. Those of you who have followed my blog will know the story, the deep questions I had about God, and for God. As I emerged on the other side of grief though, I discovered that through it all, God had been holding me in his hands. Wile I had let go of him, he never let go of me. I learnt that it is possible to praise God in the midst of pain, not FOR the pain, but despite it.
The tears still fall. The hole in my life is still there. My daughter is still dead. YET will I praise him. I praise him for the gift of motherhood, of children, even though this gift has come with large doses of tears. Love involves grief, it cannot be otherwise, this side of heaven.
Thus, I am always on the look-out for songs that, as the Psalms do, express something of this dichotomy. I often feel that our western style of worship ignores the lament, the worship given in the place of deepest sorrow, because we live in a culture where pain is medicated away, or surgically fixed, and therefore we don't know how to handle the pain of a soul, which cannot be treated so easily.
I recently re-discovered Tim Hughes' song "When the silence falls", popularly known as 'When the tears fall', which is exactly this kind of song. I found two versions on YouTube that I like, for different reasons. Watch them both, and decide for yourself which one you prefer.
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