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Writer's pictureDebbie Salter Goodwin

A Prayer for Special Mothers...


Who Have Lost a Child

by death, miscarriage, or estrangement.

I know something of the hole in your heart, the empty place that haunts you, especially on Mother’s Day.

There is one less card, one less hug, one less chair today. It hurts. It always hurts.

And while I know only too well there is nothing I can say or do to fill that hole, I would like to offer this prayer for you and ask you to pray it for me.

Lord

Of all birth and adoption,

Of all life and death,

Of all our days marked by relationship and separation;

You know the hole we carry.

Take us to your quiet place this day of many celebrations.

Remind us of the hope we shared for the life we borrowed from you.

Point out where hope grew love

To make something good and lasting in us.

No matter what time we had, remind us

That life matters, even when it was just the hope of it.

Say to us again that we did what we could.

Protect us from the useless ghosts of guilt

That whisper their if-onlies to our undoing.

Show us again that your match

Of mamma and child was perfect,

That nothing we could have done

Would have made as much difference

As all we did.

Teach us how to celebrate our memories in gratitude

For we would be paupers without them.

Each one stretched our hearts and shaped us.

And when the tears comes

As we know they will,

When we miss all that will never be;

Give us a new picture for our heart’s scrapbook

Of who we have become,

Of how no part of love is ever wasted.

Of how it leads us to love deeper

With an urgency we would not have known.

Help us hold our heads high

In the circle of mothers where we belong,

For though part of our mothering is over;

You never waste what love has grown

You redeem, reuse, restore.

And you let us touch the hope

Of the right now but not yet mystery.

While we may celebrate this day quieter

And with a touch of sadness;

Make of this day first and last

A day to remember that

You made us mothers

And nothing we have lost

Can take away anything we have gained.

Today, especially today,

Help us to live the gain

As we remember the loss.

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