You were at boarding school and we were six hours from you in our ministry. Our first and oldest to fly from home, you seemed far too young, and we felt so unready. But, the label “Missionary Kid” found a home with other third-world high-schoolers from all over Europe. And for the first time, you made friends I didn’t know, and teachers whose faces I memorized from newsletters. The separation was the hardest thing I’d ever gone through as a mother, like an arm cut off or a pulse with half a beat.
But there you thrived. You discovered your people. And then one day I got a call from the school receptionist.
You’d had a bad day, she said. She could tell by the look on your face when you came to the reception desk.
“Are you all right?” she’d asked.
And as she told me the story, I could see in my mind the crumple of your face and the quiver of your lip. I pictured your strong hold-back-the-cry liquify into an unleashed dam, and I felt the humiliation you experienced in the busy school’s hallway.
She opened the door, and drew you into her office. You cried against her shoulder. She listened to your sputtered words and soothed your heart. Then she reached behind with one hand, and pulled a tissue for you to blow your nose.
I wanted to be the one who handed you that tissue. I longed to be with you. I felt the ghost of jealousy for the hug that should have been mine.
And something inside, silly and perhaps a little selfish, whispered, “Am I still your favorite mother?”
I wish somehow God had made a mother’s pain lessen with her children’s peeling away. It would be nice if in proportion to a child’s widening independence the wounds of separation decreased, anesthetizing a forever-severing umbilical love.
As my children grew, I prayed for godly men and women to come alongside them. God has repeatedly answered that for which I am so thankful. Each time I see it happen, I thank Him with a truly grateful heart.
And I mourn just a bit with a truly longing heart.
Because, even though they are grown now with their own children to care for, I still yearn to be Mom on the other side of the desk, to open the door, and wipe their tears. I want my hand to offer them the tissue.
Yet these are the ways our Father teaches me. He both reprimands and reminds me in His gentle and caring way, He is all they really need.
And He confirms to me again that He is all I need.
I’m grateful for the other mom’s, the in-law-sides, who share my love for my children and their spouses.
I thank Jesus for the wonderful friendships which have grown around them like warm cocoons of care and protection. I love that I love my children’s friends. They encourage walks with Jesus. They listen, and laugh together. 
And sometimes watching from the outside, the question whispers again, “Am I still your favorite mother?” When it does, I take comfort from Jesus’ final instruction to John.
When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home. (John 19:26-27 ESV)
While dying for everyone, past, present and future, Jesus spoke to one mother in the crowd. As the Perfect-God-Son cruelly hung in sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, He stepped into her humanity, into her grief and need. He set her apart from all the others in deep son-to-mother love.
Jesus remembered His mother and spoke what a Momma needed to hear for a broken heart to heal. Jesus still understands a mother’s heart.
Birthing pangs continue within a mother’s DNA. I feel wistful for days past, for velvet arms around my neck, for faces up-too-close. I miss the soft-voiced promises to “never, ever leave me.”
These realities are the blessing and heartache of Mom-hood. It’s the leave and cleave, which give way to God-purposed layers of generations. And although it’s right and good, sometimes it hurts with a thankful, mournful kind of pain.
Mother’s Day coincides with graduations, weddings, and launchings. Changing roles and celebrations whisper that same need for assurance.
If my mother would still be alive this Mother’s Day, I would put my arms around her small frame and lean my head down to feel her soft gray hair press against my cheek. I would whisper loudly so she could hear, “You are still my favorite Mother.”
She would smile, and I would hand her a tissue.
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