Our greatest motivator is to reunite a healthy mother with her children.
This Mother’s Day, we remember the moms and kids who are still in the middle of that journey.
Mother’s Day. If you are a mom, what a wonderful day of celebration!
But what if you are a mom separated from your children? Is there peace and hope to be found?
by Terri Gordineer
After 3 years apart, Terri is pursuing a new relationship with her daughter. Following her own positive experiences with both programs, she is now the Program Director at Branch 15 and Volunteer Coordinator for Stand in the Gap.
A WORD TO ALL MOTHERS
Motherhood is spoken of throughout Scripture as a high and important calling. Children are viewed as a blessing– “a heritage from the Lord… a reward from Him.” (Psalm 127:3) And motherhood is also viewed as a blessing–but one that is at God’s prerogative to grant, and one that brings with it a high responsibility.
Being a mother is perhaps the hardest and most rewarding job we as women will ever experience.
Every mother can struggle with feeling inadequate or unworthy, whether she’s with her children every day or separated from them. When you feel worthless or start questioning your calling as a mother, remember what you are to the Lord. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. “I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works”. (Psalm 139:14)
Remember we are created in His image (Genesis 1:27). God and God alone holds our life and our children’s lives in His hands. He loves us with an everlasting love. He knew you and chose you before you were even born. (Psalm 139:13). He loves you despite your flaws and issues. He loves you no matter the messes that you have made.
God’s love takes you beyond your heartaches and pain. Love like His can lift you out of the hurt and despair that you may be experiencing. We are children of God, crowned with glory and honor (Romans 8:16-17).
You are not worthless. You have not made so many mistakes or bad choices that God cannot redeem and restore you and your family. Your worth and purpose in this life do not depend upon what you have done or where you have been. Your worth and purpose depend on God with His will, His choosing, and His love.
TO MOTHERS WHO ARE SEPARATED FROM THEIR CHILDREN
Does “brokenhearted” describe you? When we are brokenhearted, we can replay painful thoughts over and over again in our own minds, such as “I will never be happy again.” “I am alone forever”, “I am such a failure”. Your feelings try to tell you that God is so far away from you. But in reality, He is closer than ever. God loves the brokenhearted. “He heals the broken in heart and binds up their wounds.” (Psalm 147:3)
Sometimes our burdens seem like more than we can bear, but the Lord hears your cries and is ready to lift you up and bear your burden. He is compassionate, patient and merciful. He reaches out to you with tenderness, waiting to comfort you, and offer you the hope and healing you need to face the future.
Whatever the reason for separation, living apart from a child can be devastatingly painful. Everyday that you are apart you wonder what they are doing and how they are living life. You wonder what new things they are learning and if they slept good last night.
We can begin to question the goodness of God, the “why” questions.
Why can’t we be together?
Why can’t I watch them grow?
I want to understand the “why”. Yet, God’s Word tells us “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all of your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your path.” (Proverbs 3:5-6)
When life is tough and you see nothing but adversity, trials, and pain, you long for that understanding. We must trust God. He knows what is best for us and our children. He loves our children even more than we love them. That is a difficult concept to grasp, but it is truth.
He wraps His arms around us and reveals Himself as the God who comforts and carries us when we have not strength left to go on. God is in absolute control. His sovereignty is a blessed truth. To be sovereign means that God makes His own plans and carries them out in His own time and way. There is nothing accidental with God. I don’t pretend to understand or know the answers as to why.
Remember that God is with you when everything goes right, and He is also with you when everything seems to go wrong. We must be willing to put all our circumstances in His hands. God’s presence remains with us, whether we recognize it or not.
A WORD OF HOPE
In those darkest times in our lives, God calls upon us to trust Him until the light returns. We are so focused on our pain, we don’t really believe that God can do what He says He can. We forget God is still God and He is still completely trustworthy. He can change the hearts of men and women. He is able to supply all our needs, able to move heaven and earth, and works all things together for our good and His Glory.
God will see us through. The more we trust Him, the more we will experience Him, and the more we experience Him, the more others will see Him. His ways are perfect, and we don’t have to understand them in order to be guided and led by Him.
Even when God seems distant or silent, continue to walk by faith, trusting in His name and who He is. He is working! We just trust and God steps in. He will meet the need or solve the problem. His job is to fight, and our job is to trust. Not to question, or direct, or even try to control.
”Though we may not escape the consequences of our actions, we can experience God’s complete love and forgiveness.
God chose you. And no matter what you have walked through in your life, despite all the discouragement, despair, failures, and temptations, you can know with confidence that you can be more than conquerors through Him. We conquer not because of what we feel or what we experience; but because of who God is. “In all things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.” (Romans 8:37)
God’s capacity for restoring our life is beyond our understanding. God can bring joy out of tragedy. Pain is not the enemy; it is only the indicator that brokenness exists. True joy is not the absence of pain but the sustaining presence of the Lord during the pain. “They that sow in tears shall reap in joy”. (Psalm 126:5)
If we trust God with our broken and wounded hearts, He will bring healing, restoration, and wholeness. What we see as better left for broken, He sees as beautiful. God cherishes that broken life and loves and heals us and our children to make us whole again. While our past may have been painful, we can be thankful that God can take our past and use it for His glory today, giving us a new beginning.
My heart’s desire is that you will gain hope and see the Glory of God in your life. We have experienced the depths of brokenness, suffering and affliction. We have endured our seasons of grieving. The Lord is our redeemer, the restorer of our losses. If we reach out towards God, we will find Him already waiting there. No matter what our circumstances, God meets us there with His grace.
We need not give up hope and never stop fighting for what we believe in. There is always hope. And if there is hope, we can keep going forward and bring others with us.
