Nope, I skip church every Mother’s Day because my mother died when I was 20 and I don’t want to sob for three hours in front of other people. I miss her so much anyway, and since she always strived to what the Lord wanted her to be, Mother’s Day is a gigantic sign saying “YOUR MOTHER DOESN’T EXIST IN THIS WORLD ANYMORE”. It’s like a funeral every single year.

I don’t have kids, so of course Mother’s Day isn’t about me. It is a reminder of a horrible loss.

I don’t want to take it away from other people, though, so I just don’t go.

If we treat them all the same, if we think of them as being the same, we only help perpetuate the latter group’s unhappiness. How is that compassion?

I realize that not everyone has concerns with Mothers Day. If you are someone who doesn’t feel any discomfort from the way that the day is generally celebrated, excellent. If you’re in the ninety and nine who don’t have any problem with traditional celebration, more power to you.

Please recognize that there are people who don’t fit into the ninety and nine. And it’s my view that, following the Savior’s example, we should reach out to everyone — *especially* the ones who may feel sorrow and pain and feel excluded from the community. When one sheep struggles or calls out, the Lord’s response is not, “well, there are lots of other sheep that don’t feel that way at all, I don’t see what your problem is.” The Lord’s response is to take special measures and reach out individually to that sheep.

So if you’re in the ninety and nine who don’t need any special care, excellent. (Though don’t get too comfortable — it seems to me that we all spend some time as the one lost or excluded, sooner or later.) In the meantime, please don’t begrudge my own and others’ imperfect efforts to reach out to people who aren’t as comfortable as you are.

One of the ubiquitous practices on Mother’s Day is talking about the 2000 Ammonite warriors’ tribute to the faith of their mothers, and applying it to those in the congregation. But seldom do these recitations acknowledge that what the Ammonite mothers did that proved their testimonies to their sons was beyond the range of what most American LDS moms do. All of those young men were children too young to take the oath against violence with their fathers and older brothers. They witnessed their fathers go out, unarmed, to meet the oncoming Lamanite army with prayer rather than physical struggle. They saw their mothers supporting their fathers and older sons, in the full knowledge that the attackers could work their way right through the men, and begin to slaughter them and their other children. To claim the mantle of faith that those mothers demonstrated on that day is a fearsome responsibility. It is on the level of the courage of the mothers involved in the most harrowing experiences of the persecuted Saints of the Nineteenth Century. It should make all of us–mothers and fathers and otherwise–feel inadequate, humbled, and dependent on God, rather than satisfied with ourselves.

I am a 20 year military veteran. As an attorney I did not experience combat, though many of my colleagues did. That is also true for many of my military peers, even though we served during the conflicts in Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, and now Iraq and Afghanistan. When we see combat veterans being honored, we wonder how we would have acted under pressure, but we join in honoring them, having perhaps a better appreciation than the public at large for what valor means. We don’t begrudge them the honor, and we don’t feel honoring them is dishonoring us. We know that we were ready, willing and able to take on those responsibilities if we had been called to do so. Such occasions are also emotionally charged for many combat veterans, who remember comrades in arms lost or wounded. But there are good reasons for honoring those veterans.

Motherhood has a lot in common with military service. It is something not easily left behind, and can commit a person to all sorts of harrowing experiences and losses, as well as bring the occasional triumph. Both the positive and negative experiences are, to a large extent, beyond personal control. It creates opportunities to exercise humility and dependence on God. It is an experience worthy of sober celebration.

One practical suggestion: How about the bishopric asking the Relief Society to organize the program for Mother’s Day?

When I dealt with six miscarriages, it was awful, but Mother’s Day wasn’t about my loss, it was about honoring mothers. And there were plenty of them to go around.

Don’t get me wrong, I spent plenty of time crying and feeling sorry for myself. More than my share. And now I’ve got a 22 years and counting full of stupid mothering stuff that I regret and wish I could have a do-over to fix. And I can’t, so I’m not worthy and all that.

But the pains of non-motherhood and of motherhood never transformed into pain toward all-thing-relating-to-mothers — and I don’t think it has to.

I’m an adoptee, too, but can’t figure out how that alone would put me out of the Mother’s Day loop. A mother is the one who cares for you, not the one who got impregnated with you. I was blessed to have a REAL mother who loved me unconditionally–and that was something! I really miss her and will be honoring her this Sunday.