Weekend Snapshot

Hey Northgate,

Mother’s Day weekend can be a tricky one at church. Personally, I will never forget my church experience on Mother’s Day 2009.

In 2008, Amy had hoped to be pregnant by Mother’s Day. That came and went with no positive test. Fast forward a year, and I think we were both dreading Mother’s Day at church. At the time, we were at a church that had all of the mothers stand to receive applause and a gift. It was a nice gesture, but undoubtedly difficult for people who found Mother’s Day to be less than celebratory for a variety of reasons.

Side note: I was given a budget that year to buy small gifts for each of the moms. I’m not a fan of small gifts. Sure, they’re nice for a second, but half of them are left at the church, in your car, or thrown away. You may appreciate the gesture, but it’s little more than that. I reached out to our local crisis pregnancy center and asked if there was a mom we could support. I took those funds, bought a nice stroller, and gave it to an expecting mom as a way of saying, “We see your decision to choose life, and we want to support and encourage you.” If you don’t know this about me, I will always choose doing something on mission over keeping traditions. Not everyone appreciated this change, but it’s hard to complain about not getting a $5 gift when you see that money going to something much more meaningful.

So when Mother’s Day 2009 came around, Amy scheduled herself to work overnight from Saturday into Sunday. It was an easy out. When you’re a floor nurse, you miss a lot of regularly scheduled things. Whenever Amy wasn’t with me, people would ask, “Is she working or sleeping?” because it was usually one of the two. In this case, she worked from 7:00 p.m. Saturday through 7:30 a.m. Sunday. She could spend more of Sunday sleeping instead of thinking about not being a mom yet.

But before she left for work that Saturday night, she took a pregnancy test, and for the first time, it was positive. She brought it down to show me. I was admittedly skeptical. I said it looked more like a division symbol than a plus sign. She told me she had taken so many tests and that this one was different than the rest. And then she left for work! I was just sitting there on the couch with no one to process the news with other than my dog (he was a great listener but didn’t offer much advice).

When morning came, I got up and went to church. I was doing what we call “hosting” at Northgate. The song right before I came up was “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” I remember standing in the front row with tears streaming down my face, knowing I had to pull it together because you can’t tell people your wife is pregnant when she’s only 4–5 weeks along.

One more side note: The following Wednesday, I came to Northgate for a meeting. During a prayer time, a young worship leader at the other end of the table asked for prayer. He shared that he and his wife had lost several pregnancies, but the doctors believed they had finally figured out the issue, and he asked us to pray for his wife’s current pregnancy.

Still in that stage where we couldn’t tell anyone about Amy being pregnant, I so deeply wanted to share our news with him, but I didn’t. I’ve often thought back on that moment as I’ve watched Anthony’s oldest son and my oldest daughter grow up in church and serve on missions teams together. They are regularly a tangible reminder of God’s incredible faithfulness in both of our lives from that moment until now.

In between services, I ran to the store to get a Mother’s Day card to go with the Red Sox onesie I had purchased a few years earlier. I had never anticipated that I would be putting it away for as long as I did. When I got to the store, I was surprised to see the card aisle jam-packed with dads picking out a Mother’s Day card. I resisted the urge to tell them that I hadn’t known I was a dad 24 hours earlier. I assumed they didn’t have the same excuse.

I’ve reflected on that Sunday for many reasons. First, that positive pregnancy test became our beautiful 16-year-old daughter, Grace. Second, I’ve heard that the church still gives missional Mother’s Day gifts. And third, I’ve thought a lot about the women, like Amy that year, who dread coming to church on Mother’s Day. It’s so important to me that we find a way to both celebrate moms and make church a safe and loving place for people who are hurting.

So this year, at the same time that we thank and celebrate moms, we also want to acknowledge the women who:

Want to be a mom and aren’t yet
Have experienced miscarriage or pregnancy loss
Have lost their mom
Don’t have a relationship with their mom
Have or had an abusive or hurtful mom
Are moms who don’t have a relationship with their children
Have had to bury a child
Northgate is a place where you don’t have to hide the pain or the difficulty of this day.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” — Romans 15:13

See you this weekend,

Pastor John
Lead Pastor