Mother’s Day – a day to honor Mom’s, advertised as sunshine and flowers. But not for all. For many, the day is filled with boulders and light. Depression and anxiety have reached an all-time high, it’s hard to celebrate when you are wading through the murkiness of life. For some, its generalized, for others, it may be a season in life; those trying to conceive, those who choose not to conceive, those grieving their own mothers, or loss of a pregnancy, and those like me- grieving a child.
Life can be full of contradictions… that is one thing I know for sure. Mother’s Day is inherent with dissonance, for me, as a bereaved mother. I live life, grateful for, and proud of my two adult thriving children, and grateful for, and heartbroken for my angel.
I’ve walked through a deep murky forest carrying a backpack of boulders since my last Mother’s Day with Amilia, in 2003.
The path wasn’t always clear, and often it was a steep climb… It was dark.
My faith gave me sustenance, that the sun would dawn and make visible a clear trail to follow. There would be wrong turns, and circle backs…Some days there would be a glimpse of light - only to turn pitch black again.
It’s hard to keep moving forward, in the dead of night.
Those are the days, that I tap into Amilia’s radiant essence of “10,000 watts of light”, as described by Pastor, Phil Bauman, and the lesson is illuminated.
On those days, I try to be open and trust, and remember, that in the darkness, there is some light.
Darkness is defined as “radiating, admitting, or reflecting little light,” as defined by Dictionary.com.
Then the lesson becomes clear…
Keep moving forward, one step at a time,
and be the one to reflect the light.
On those days filled with dissonance, obstacles, and gloom, we can be the one to illuminate our path and hopefully shed some light to others along the way.
