Saturday, May 08, 2010

History Calms Anxiety

A friend of mine posted an interesting link on the history of Mother's Day yesterday. I wasn't too interested in reading it at first, but after a quick skim was amazed at what I began to find. I pray that learning some of this history may take a bit of sting out of Mother's Day for hurting hearts and help relieve a measure of your anxiety about tomorrow. And even if this knowledge changes nothing about how you feel about the second Sunday of May, please know that you are in my prayer this weekend. {{{hug}}}

Tomorrow will mark 100 years since Mother's Day became an officially recognized holiday in the United states. I was surprise to learn that this date was actually created for and by some of the very groups of people for whom the yearly observance has become most painful in modern day.

Mother's Day was started by a single woman who never had children, to honor her deceased mother, Ann Marie Reeves Jarvis. Ann Marie had 11 children, but only 4 survived to adulthood, so as a bereaved mom, 7 times over, she knew much great and heartache and grief in motherhood!

This Day was originally intended to be a memorial day for mothers who had died, as well as a way to bestow honor and dignity on all women who were homemakers.

If your heart is hurting this Mother's Day, please feel free to visit more articles that I pray will encourage you this week.

2 comments:

SomeGirl said...

Wow, that's interesting! I always thought it was just a Hallmark created day. :) Thanks for sharing this! ♥ Michelle

Lisa Copen said...

Thank you for writing this! I kept meaning to write it up for my blog but the week got away from me. So I just tweeted to your article. One of those full circle moments (enough to make me dizzy) love ya!