Mother's Day is one of those things I wrestle with each year, especially when it comes to church life. So far, I've chosen to mention it during prayers and little else. There's all kinds of baggage when it comes to mothers, my own included. I can't help but be even more wary of that sort of celebration when the Bible mostly names women in relation to the sons they gave birth to. The founder of Mother's Day as we know it, Anna Jarvis, wasn't one of the feather rufflers.
But Julia Ward Howe, who wanted a "Mother's Day of Peace" years before the official Mother's Day--I could get behind her notion of Mother's Day, as well as the similar notion belonging to many women longing and working for peace around the U.S. Civil War. If you've never read her "Appeal to Womanhood Throughout the World", you should. She and so many others were tired of the violence of war, and the fact that war took their children from them. I can't shake the echo of Jesus' words, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God." There's some twisted irony when people long for peace because their children are dying.
As I tried to sort Mother's Day in my own mind this year, I kept thinking of those women saying as loudly as they could, "You don't get to kill our children." I've read the words of many women saying the same thing in the past months. This time, they are women fighting for the safety of their black children, saying as loudly as they can, "Black lives matter."
Because some children of some mothers are still especially vulnerable. When I read the list posted by the Very Smart Brothas a few days ago, I was shocked. I knew so few of their names, so few of their stories. That fact likely has something to do with the color of my skin and what the national media ignores. I also thought of their mothers, wrestling with Mother's Day when their children are dead.
So I found most of their names through the power of Google. In the end, I had a sheet from a yellow legal pad filled: Gloria Darden, Gwen Carr, Angela Helton, Tressa Sherrod, Lesley McSpadden, Judy Scott, Tina Hunter, Catherine Daniels, Shirley Marshall Harrison, Tanya Brown, Carolyn Baylor-Guimmo, Andrea Irwin, Samaria Rice, Cassandra Johnson, Sylvia Palmer, Tritobia Ford, Nora Brisbon, Susan Hunt, Syretta Myers, Dominika Stanley, Constance Malcolm, Georgia Farrell, Diane Roberson, Carol Gray, Dorothy Davis, Wanda Johnson, Sybrina Fulton.
For these mothers missing children, I pray. I also add: they deserve more than Hallmark sentimentality. And they are certainly not alone.
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