EP 83: In Honor of Mothers Everywhere

Mother’s Day is right around the corner, so honoring mom is what I’d like to discuss on the podcast this week. Even if giving birth to you is all your mother ever did, she would still be worthy of your gratitude and respect. But for most of our moms, the end of labor and delivery was when the real work began. 

Honoring Mothers Everywhere

Complete Transcript from Episode 83

Hello, friend.

Welcome to Episode 83 of Loving Life at Home. Today is May 5, 2025, which means Mother’s Day is right around the corner, so that’s what I’d like to discuss on the podcast this week: Honoring mom.

I know in recent years, it has become popular to downplay Mother’s Day so as not to alienate or trigger or callously hurt the feelings of women who, for whatever reason, have not been able to have children.

Some struggle with infertility. Some are single with no viable prospects of getting married anytime soon. Some may have lost the children they carried to miscarriage, stillbirth, or childhood disease.

And, while I understand there are many, many women who would love to be mothers but aren’t, and I sympathize with their plight, the fact is this holiday isn’t about them.

Nor is it about flaunting the fact that some of us have children while others don’t.Rather, it’s about celebrating the fact that every single one of us has or had a mother. A mother who conceived us, carried us in her womb for nine months (give or take a few days or weeks), and delivered us into this world, often through great pain and turmoil.

Just like every other person living on this planet today, the reason I’ve had any kind of life at all is because my mother did that for me, the same way your mother did it for you.

Those are the women we honor on Mother’s Day.

And, even if giving birth to you is all your mother ever did, she would still be worthy of your gratitude and respect. But for most of our moms, the end of labor and delivery was when the real work began.

Something We All Should Do

I know cynics will tell you that Mother’s Day was invented by greeting card companies to generate more sales, but there’s a biblical precedent for it, as well. After all, “Honor you father and mother” is the fifth of ten commandments that God handed down through Moses, but as Paul tells us in Ephesians 6:2-3, it’s “the first commandment [that came] with a promise… that it may go well with you and that you may have a long life on the earth.”

If your mother has already passed away, you can honor her memory and thank God for the years you had together. But if you are fortunate enough to still have a mom who’s alive and well, I hope you’ll take this opportunity to call or visit her and let her know how much you love and appreciate her. And not just on Mother’s Day, but all year long.

We see a beautiful example of this loving tribute in action in the description of the virtuous woman in Proverbs 31:28-29: “Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also praises her saying, ‘Many daughters have done nobly, But you excel them all.’”

You may be thinking, “Well, of course, that woman’s children rise up and call her blessed. She’s the epitome of virtue. It would be easy to honor and respect a mother like the Proverbs 31 woman. But my mom? That’s a different story!”

Or… maybe you never knew your mom – perhaps she died in childbirth or gave you up for adoption (like my husband’s birth mother did) or maybe she battled drug or alcohol addiction (like our current vice-president’s mother) and was abusive or negligent or entirely absent for long stretches of your childhood.

A Fresh Start

Even if you didn’t have a good relationship with your mom growing up, if you’re a mother yourself, you have the opportunity to turn over a new leaf and a better mom to your own children. To break the cycle of rage or neglect or abuse and, by God’s grace, to be present and involved and the kind of patient, loving, nurturing mother you always craved.

And, if you don’t have children? You can still use your nurturing instincts to build up and encourage and invest in the people around you. My children’s piano teacher does that. She never had any children of her own, but for years she has poured into the lives of her students and taught and trained and encouraged them — not just in music, but in other ways, as well — a fact that I love and for which I am so very grateful!

My unmarried daughters, too, have found ways to nurture those around them. One of them has spent the past year working as a nanny to five young children in Germany. Another is a nurse in labor and delivery where she takes excellent care of her patients, both mothers and babies, and offers heartfelt encouragement to them. And my oldest daughter has truly been like a second mother to several of her nieces and nephews. They all adore her and love for her to come visit them as often as she possibly can.

But let’s back up to the idea that some mothers don’t measure up to our expectations. Interestingly, the fifth commandment doesn’t provide any caveats. It doesn’t say “Honor your parents unless they’re unreasonable or overbearing or cold or distant or fault-finding or impossible to please or just generally crappy people.”

Of course, we can be certain that God is keenly aware of our parent’s shortcomings. He knows they are flawed even better than we do.

Yet He still commands us to honor them, which is something different than endorsing their wrong behavior, incidentally. You can treat your parents respectfully and maintain—as far as it depends on you– an open line of communication without applauding everything they do.

We read in Leviticus 19:3: “Each of you must respect his mother and father, and you must keep My Sabbaths. I am the LORD your God.”

And Proverbs 23:22 tells us, “Listen to your father who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old.”

Moreover, Matthew 15:4 warns, “For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.’”

That’s how serious the charge to honor your parents was in the Old Testament. Jesus points to this passage in his discussion with the pharisees and scribes, because those two groups of people were masters at finding ways to ignore God’s clear commands – especially this one — and explain why it didn’t apply in their particular situation.

Trust and Obey

Don’t be guilty of this same sin of the pharisees. It has become all too common in our day and age for children to cut their parents completely out of their lives, often for very trivial reasons: Maybe they disapprove of the parents’ political leanings or don’t like how they vote. I know of whole families who’ve been split apart by the fact that certain family members voted for Trump and the others are angry about it.

Or maybe the kids don’t approve of parents’ dietary decisions or the fact they cook with unfiltered water or use Teflon pans or seed oil, or they’re afraid they’ll give the grandkids refined sugar. I have some very health-conscious daughters-in-law, and although I do my best to follow their good examples when doling out snacks to the grandkids, I can assure you their children have sometimes eaten treats at my house that they don’t normally get at home, but I’m happy to report that both my sons and my daughters-in-law have been extremely gracious and forgiving when that happens, but I know that isn’t always the case in other families.

Or maybe the kids find their parents’ mannerisms excessively annoying and avoid visiting them so they won’t have to deal with that irritation.

The puzzling thing is, I have friends who have managed to forgive truly horrific behavior on the part of their parents and have maintained a relationship with them against all odds. I’m not saying they let those parents babysit their kids or give them a key to their house, but they still love them and are respectful toward them and they check up on them regularly.

Whereas I’ve also known of many, many other people, young and old alike, who’ve cut their parents completely out of their lives, often for relatively minor grievances — and they feel entirely justified for having done so.

It’s a travesty and a shame.

If you’re presently in such a situation, I’d encourage you to treat your parents the way you’d want to be treated. Do what you can to bury the hatchet and make amends. Because, you can be sure, your children are observing how you relate (or don’t relate) with your parents and may eventually end up relating (or not relating) to you in much the same way.

That was one of the thoughts that compelled me to keep working on my relationship with my in-laws. I discussed that history at length in Episode 2, which I’ll link in the show notes. The short version is, it seemed to me in the early years of our marriage that my husband’s parents were extremely difficult to please.

But I kept reaching out, mainly because I wanted to be obedient to scripture and to honor the LORD in the way I related to them, and I can honestly say that God blessed those efforts and has given me a very good relationship with both my in-laws today. We love and respect and understand one another in a way I would not have thought possible ten, fifteen, even twenty years into my marriage.

But I kept on trying, because I recognized the fact my children would observe my example – for good or for ill – and would likely take their cues from my behavior in the future.

Your Impact on a Watching World

Several years ago, back in the summer of 2017 I think it was, our family took part in a BBC documentary starring Miriam Margolyes. She’s immensely popular in Great Brittain, but American audiences would mainly recognize her as Professor Sprout from the Harry Potter films.

Anyway, Miriam and I do not see eye-to-eye on very many issues at all, but I love her and she loves me, and we’ve maintained a friendship now for 8 years.

In fact, I had a two-hour Skype conversation with her just a couple of months ago. She’s starting a podcast and asked me to be her guest, which of course I was delighted to do. None of her podcasts have actually been published yet, to my knowledge, but she did send me a link to the original documentary we did, which I’ll put in today’s show notes if you’re interested in watching it.

But my point in telling you all this is that Miriam once asked me, a long time ago, whether I thought the world would be better off if everyone were more like me. That’s a great question for any of us to ponder.

I told her that would depend entirely upon what she meant. If by “like me” you mean they’d all be freckled and red-headed and shop thrift stores and love arts and crafts and listen to classical music and live in East Texas and have a whole bunch of kids and homeschool them all, then no. I don’t think the world would necessarily be better off if all those things were true.

In fact, it might feel start to feel kind of boring. I love the fact that everyone looks different and has different interests and giftings and hobbies. Variety is the spice of life, as they say.

Or, as Paul put it in 1 Corinthians 12:17- 18, “If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? [Or] If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact, God has arranged the members of the body, every one of them, according to His design.”

But of course, if by “like me” you mean, do I think the world would be better off if everyone in it loved their family and remained true to their wedding vows and treated others the way they’d like to be treated and tried to glorify God in everything they do? Then yes, I do think that would a positive difference in our culture.

And I’ve intentionally conducted my life in such a way as might allow me to say with Paul, “Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ.” Because, guess what? That’s exactly what our kids often end up doing, whether we tell them to in so many words or not.

Strong Families are the Backbone of Society

Yesterday, one of my daughters overheard me humming an old hymn and said, “Oh, Mom, that hymn always makes me want to cry.”

I was actually singing “Be Still My Soul,” but it’s the same tune as “A Christian Home,” which the church she attended while living in Jordan sang on the regular.

The lyrics are beautiful, so I think I’ll finish this week’s podcast by singing them for you, in case you aren’t familiar with them. The song goes like this:

“O give us homes built firm upon the Saviour,
Where Christ is Head, and Counsellor and Guide;
Where ev’ry child is taught His love and favor
And gives his heart to Christ, the crucified:
How sweet to know that tho’ his footsteps waver
His faithful Lord is walking by his side!

“O give us homes with godly fathers, mothers,
Who always place their hope and trust in Him;
Whose tender patience turmoil never bothers,
Whose calm and courage trouble cannot dim;
A home where each finds joy in serving others,
And love still shines, tho’ days be dark and grim.

“O give us homes where Christ is Lord and Master,
The Bible read, the precious hymns still sung;
Where prayer comes first in peace or in disaster,
And praise is natural speech to ev’ry tongue;
Where mountains move before a faith that’s vaster,
And Christ sufficient is for old and young.

“O Lord, our God, our homes are Thine forever!
We trust to Thee their problems, toil, and care;
Their bonds of love no enemy can sever
If Thou art always Lord and Master there:
Be Thou the center of our least endeavor:
Be Thou our Guest, our hearts and homes to share.”

Isn’t that a wonderful prayer? It is the cry of my heart. And as we celebrate and honor our mothers this coming Sunday, I hope it will be your prayer, as well.

The Word of God is full of wisdom for every facet of life, but we’ve found it especially helpful in building a happy, healthy marriage. For a fascinating look at how science has confirmed the superiority of God’s design, check out my book Love Your Husband/Love Yourself.