ROOTED RENEGADE

It is such a hard day for many women and mom’s who find this day to be both joyous and painful. While celebrating their own mother’s who brought them into this world by the Grace of God, there are many who are filled with grief and loss. Grief over losing children due to adverse circumstances such as custody battles and kidnappings, miscarriages and abortions. Others such as car accidents, murder, suicides, accidental overdoses, and natural causes, some of which has led to disabilitiesas well. There is pain over losing part of one’s heart to the loss of a child that often goes unnoticed on a day like today while part of the world celebrates Motherhood and the other part of the world is condemning it.

While our world drastically shifts and changes and continues to move in ways many of us, scripturally knew to be prepared for, have found it difficult to actually have our mama’s hearts prepared for. As I processed this the last few days and really sat with it, I realized that there is so much grief that mom’s go through, myself included, that often gets overlooked or not talked about. It is grief that while many continue their daily lives in an attempt to find a semblance of normal, must be healed so that it does not give way to other things, that are unhealthy.

Many of us, with such a loss, have deep wounds that only Jesus can heal by allowing those wounds to be cleansed with more than just some peroxide every now and then when the memories come. They get bandaged over, only to be forgotten about with the day to day busyness of our lives. Yes, I know some wounds don’t go away. Some memories you think and feel cannot forget the excruciating pain of them. Sometimes it is a daily, minute by minute reminder that your child is never coming home or that it wasn’t fair their life was taken. For some of us the empty house is a reminder that our children are not a part of our daily waking up, with no lunch boxes to make or homework to do, no boo-boos to kiss or bedtime stories to read. We don’t get to participate in the preparations that our kids get too such as sports, proms, graduations from middle to high school then to college, and so forth. Many parents who have lost kids to custody battles live the daily loss as well and in the circumstances surrounding the loss and there are instances where the pain is constant and the wound stays open. There are many different aspects to this and I get it.

I couldn’t forget having my heart ripped out and for years I carried the betrayal and anger and grief with me. It was as if that had become my only comfort. To know that the pain I felt over losing my children would somehow hold me together and keep me alive. I can’t tell you that it made sense, because at the time I felt it did, but looking back, I realize it was just a response to deep wounds of betrayal and pain that did not end well for me during that time period of my life. What I can tell you is this: the moment that I started allowing healing from my grief was the moment I stopped allowing it to define my life. We can never get back loss in a sense of what it does to our hearts with the initial wound it causes. We experience the pain. It causes the grief. It may cause betrayal for you like it did me. It may cause other things like anger, like it did for me. Whatever the case may be for you. There is an entry point and that entry point must be acknowledged for healing to take place. Mine was betrayal and grief with grief being the one that stuck around the longest. I had to grieve the loss of custody of my children due to a lot of betrayal and circumstances, some in my control and some not. What was in my control, I didn’t fully understand until many years later, because we don’t know what we don’t know. We can’t fix things without the knowledge and help to fix them. I was fighting a losing battle at the time, I just didn’t know it. And I lost greatly.

What I also didn’t realize was that I lost parts of myself along the way. I allowed the grief and betrayal to overtake my life. It doesn’t have to be the same for you. You can open up the door to Jesus and allow Him to come into those places and heal them. “God knows your grief in Motherhood and He is with you always”. Oh how I would have loved to have known this so long ago. I would have longed to have felt this in my heart and soul. I didn’t, unfortunately. My prayer is that if you feel like I did then, find someone who is Holy Spirit filled who can speak life into your situation and into YOU! My sweet sister! Oh how Jesus loves you so! I know it may not feel like it with all you are going through or have gone through in Motherhood, but can I tell you that even Jesus’s mother experienced pain and heartache too. Mary, the mother of Jesus watched her son mutilated, ridiculed, beaten, tortured, and all of this as an innocent man only to be hung on a cross for our sins, to die in our place. Yes, the precious mother Mary of our dear Savior Jesus. She too was a woman who suffered in Motherhood and God met her right where she was and loved her with an everlasting love that not even the gates of hell could quench or snuff out. (Read about Mary in the synoptic gospels – Luke 1-2, Matthew 2 & 28, Mark 3, John 19 to start)

You see we have all experienced some type of suffering, yet we are all unique as women, mothers, females, sisters, daughters of God, sisters of Christ. We can share in our experiences and heal from our grief by the power of Jesus and the Holy Spirit living inside of us. We no longer have to carry the burdens of betrayal, bitterness, anger, disappointments, etc. every day because we know that God with us (Emmanuel) came in the form of a baby through a woman’s womb to save us from it all. We can be free in knowing that we are not alone in our sufferings and they are not diminished because we have suffered them, however there is a pathway to peace that we can each recieve. Yes! It will look different for each of us. Yes! It will not be easy for each of us! Yes! We can do this because we have a God who sees (El Roi) and a God who provides (El Shaddai) and we never have to face our grief in Motherhood alone.

Dearly beloved mothers, friends, sisters in Christ, know that your mama’s heart can be healed by the power of Jesus and His blood that was shed on the cross for you. Praying that you no longer carry the burdens of grief (betrayal, bitterness, and anger) today and that you find the confidence to walk forward in the freedom of Christ Jesus!

Faythe ❤️