Mother's Day: What Does It Really Mean?
By Susan Hines-Brigger

On Mother’s Day three years ago I had an epiphany. Two months earlier I had spent nine days next to my infant son Alex’s hospital bed as he lay there suffering breathing problems and hooked up to IVs and oxygen.

I was feeling completely helpless as a mom. For the first month after we came home, we were advised to avoid having him around people, leaving us virtually housebound. As May rolled around, Alex finally began to get stronger.

On Mother’s Day, my husband confessed that, because of how hectic our lives had been, he didn’t have anything to give me for Mother’s Day. It was then that it hit me: I didn’t care about store-bought gifts. The best Mother’s Day present I could have asked for was wriggling around in my arms.

So why do I tell that story? Well, I guess because I had come to realize that this holiday has become just an excuse for increased sales of cards and flowers. And I say that as someone who had griped at my husband for what I felt was his less-than-adequate recognition of my motherly achievements with our first child.

As a mom, I try—and mostly fail—to emulate the epitome of motherhood as far as I’m concerned, the Virgin Mary. In short, when most people these days ask, “What Would Jesus Do?” as a mom I ask, “What would his mother do?”

And it is in that spirit that the holiday of Mother’s Day was founded in the first place.