On the cusp of this Mother’s Day, I remember my worst Mother’s Day.

Sometimes, I still wake in a sweat, heart pounding, reaching for the phone.

“I need to call my mom,” I think. And then, in an instant, I remember reality. I put the phone down on my nightstand.

In 2022, My mother was a year older than I will be on August 2, the day she gave birth to me, her first of three — just shy of ten pounds and two weeks past due date. She was 22 then. She was 65 on Mother’s Day morning, 21 years ago. The numbers are branded into my brain.

Two weeks before that particular Mother’s Day, Mom and I strolled through the new house where she would move at the end of May. Finally, the closeness of healed hearts, hers and mine, would be close geographically after decades apart — decades of being torn apart. Close to Todd, me, and our three little kids we adopted from Russia — the kids she adored after warning us not to adopt.

In the family room of her house-to-be, Mom showed me the shelves where she would place her Hummel collection. In the front yard, she showed me where she would plant her tea roses — the same as at her home. Mr. Lincoln. George Washington. Ronald Reagan. She used to joke that the only democrat she’d allow in her rose garden was John F. Kennedy because she couldn’t resist the pure white petals and the heavenly fragrance.

She and I walked across the street and strolled through the park where she dreamed of playing with my kids. I sat in a swing while she chatted about grandkid sleepovers she’d have, playing with them in this park, coaxing them down the slide where she’d wait wide-armed at the bottom, ready to scoop them up in her arms just like she did when I was a kid. I remember her smile and arms when I was five, at the bottom of our backyard slide we made slick with waxed paper. I can still feel her embrace before my bottom bumped at the bottom.

On Mother’s Day, 2022, Mom and I didn’t mention the two funerals that prompted her move. Her husband (my stepdad) and his son (my stepbrother). Both died from heart failure six weeks apart. I’d never seen Mom so grief-stricken.

How quickly life can slide into an unexpected, painful landing on hard ground.

But within two weeks, Mom would move hundreds of miles from where she raised us three kids to the stomping grounds of Wisconsin where her three grandkids would play in the park right across from her new house. Finally, Mom would be in the same town with her family, decades after the last of us kids left home, scattered across different states like dandelion puffs.

That phone call was the happiest twenty minutes of my life — full of joy and anticipation.

And then, my hopes and dreams shattered in an instant like a fragile glass dropped on tile, shards flying every direction.

The morning after Mother’s Day, I carried a laundry basket of dirty clothes on my hip while holding the phone between my ear and my shoulder. My sister delivered the horrible steady, solemnly.

“Mom’s dead.”

My legs collapsed at the top of the stairs and the dirty laundry tumbled down along with the basket.

“WHAT?!”

“They think she died in her sleep around 1:00 AM from a heart attack.”

One hour after Mother’s Day ended?

I began wailing, guttural groans of grief, head in hands, trying to hold the phone. Hot fire screamed from my throat, “No. NO. NO!!”

The rest is a blur. The nine hour drive with our kids in the back. The eulogy I wrote in the front seat. The meeting at the funeral home making a host of decisions — coffin, open or closed, burial or cremation.

After two decades, I no longer cry. Time has a way of soothing.

But maybe tears blur your eyes as we come close to Mother’s Day this year.

Maybe not enough time has passed.

Or maybe you’re grieving for other mother reasons.

Maybe, like me, you’ve never or not yet conceived, grown, and birthed a child in your womb. And conversations with other women slice sharp.

Maybe words from the pulpit grind like gravel into your heart-skin, leaving you hurting all over again.

Maybe there’s still some grief or some deep regret you don’t dare utter out loud.

Maybe, there’s a whole mix of emotion hard to figure out when you think of your mother. Or being a mother. Or not being a mother.

Maybe, you regret things you’ve said and done.

God only knows how memories can haunt us, tempting us to beat ourselves up over words we can’t take back, actions we can’t undo.

Maybe there are a whole lot of other maybes I haven’t even considered that are true for you.

But this I know, friend . . .

Whatever the maybes may be, we can still cling to hope and find peace for our souls.

Miracles still happen, even if they’re a long time coming.

Come to me, all who are heavy laden, and I will give you peace. 

Jesus makes no empty promises. Each are full of life. True life.

Let this particular promise of Jesus brand your heart, mind, and soul gently, never letting you forget the one who wants to give you his peace that passes all understanding.

If Jesus can resurrect a dead relationship between mother and daughter like mine to the point where I still miss her all these years later, I do believe he can do the same for you. I do believe Jesus can heal any heart-wound.

Just ask.

Just dare to be real with your Creator.

This Mother’s Day, will you let go at the top of the slide? Will you release whatever you’re clinging to that hinders you?

Let the summer breeze fly through your hair. Let Jesus scoop you up at the bottom. Let him twirl you around in his arms.

You’re safe and sound in him this Mother’s Day.

No matter where your heart is right now, Jesus has you, to have and to hold forever.