When your mom isn't really your mom...

As I sit down to think about my Mother’s day celebration I think about all the things I love about being a mom. Meeting my sweet babies for the first time, holding them as they cry (no matter how big they are), watching them become the children of God they were created to be. I love this job. I heartily embrace the task of transforming these unformed minds and guiding them with love and instruction.


But as I sit and write I can hear my youngest son playing happily (for once!) with his older siblings. I think about the woman who gave birth to him who loved him enough to let him go. The dreams she must have had for him, and the pain she must still feel when she thinks about how she let her only son slip away from her.

Max doesn’t particularly want to talk about his former life before he joined us. So I don’t know much about the woman he once called Mama. He was probably three the last time he saw his Russian mother so I can only imagine the vague memories he has floating below the surface. Her face. Her voice. The way she smelled after a shower.

He asks about her from time to time, and I always share the tiny bit of information we have about her. Mostly legal information, how old she was, where she called home. When I finish retelling the details I know about his first mother I always remind him how much she loved him, and how proud she would be if she could see him now.

So on this Mother’s day, my second as a mother of four; I try to balance my joy and sorrow. While I am beyond grateful for the son that I share with another mama, and the unique relationship I have to her. My heart also aches because can’t kiss her baby, my baby, goodnight. How I would love to give her one more chance to kiss her baby.

And as I think about her pain, my heart also aches for the countless other Mamas across our planet who have no babies to hold. And for the babies that have no Mama to hold them.

And my heart is swift to find anger for the governments who would prefer to keep those babies away from new Mamas who want nothing more than to hold them and grow them into the children of God they were created to be.

Pin It