Mother’s Day Grief: Love, Loss, and the Courage to Wait
For the mom who made it through the day — and is still carrying it.
Mother’s Day grief has a way of finding you even when you think you are prepared for it. You can plan your day, brace yourself, and still find that one ordinary moment — beautiful to everyone else in the room — that cuts right through you and leaves you sitting in the middle of it, wondering if this will ever stop catching you off guard.
This past Mother’s Day was heavy for me. Not just because of Andrew. But because we had just lost Hunter — Andrew’s dog — and the grief of that loss was sitting on top of everything else I was already carrying when I walked through the doors of our church Sunday morning.
If you are a grieving mom, I think you know exactly what I mean.
When Grief Shows Up Without Warning
Hunter came into our lives because of Andrew.
Erica, Andrew’s bride-to-be, got Hunter for him when he was flight instructing out in Arizona. Andrew was homesick — for her, for his family, for everything familiar — and she wanted him to have some companionship while he was so far from home.
But Hunter never made it to Arizona. When Andrew came home that first Christmas and took a job closer to home, Hunter stayed with us during the transition. And when Andrew eventually took a position in Muncie and found himself traveling every single weekend, kenneling Hunter became the reality.
Tony and I couldn’t bear it.
So we started meeting Andrew halfway — driving to Indianapolis to pick Hunter up, bringing him home, and then turning around on Sunday to take him back. We would have dinner together in the middle. It was such a sweet, ordinary kind of sacred — right before Andrew and Erica got married.
After a while, Andrew just said what we were all already feeling.
“Mom, just keep him. This isn’t good for the dog.”
And so Hunter became ours. My walking buddy for fifteen years. A quiet, steady presence in our home that still felt like a connection to Andrew.
His little body just got to the place where it could no longer support him anymore. And letting him go was one of the most difficult decisions I have made since Andrew went home.
It felt like letting go of another piece of our life with Andrew.
I carried all of that into church Sunday morning. And I was not prepared for what I walked into.
What Happened at Church
As the service opened, two of our teaching pastors walked onto the stage — each one with his mother.
They stood there and shared stories. How their mothers’ love had shaped them. How their mothers had prayed for them. The way those prayers had made a difference. And then each mother prayed — right there on the stage — over the congregation.
I sat there with tears streaming down my face.
Because that is grief. It does not wait for a convenient moment. It shows up inside the beautiful ones — the tender, ordinary, meant-to-be-joyful ones — and it reminds you, quietly and sharply, of everything you are missing.
The weight of my grief and the weight of your stories were heavy on me all at once.
I could see your faces.
What the Holy Spirit Said
Right there in that moment — in the middle of the service, in the middle of my own heaviness — the Holy Spirit reminded me of something.
He did not speak audibly. He spoke in my spirit. And this is what He said.
My beloved precious daughter of the King — your heart is heavy. You are carrying your grief and the grief of the moms you serve. But I never asked you to bear that weight. I asked you to bear witness. To love them. To pray for them. The rest is up to Me.
I sat with that for a long moment.
And then I found myself reciting the four words I had recorded for you in the episode the day before Mother’s Day. The four words I had encouraged you to speak every time your heart felt heavy.
He is with me.
He is with me.
He is with me.
If you did not hear that episode, I want you to stop right here and let those words settle over you before you read another word.
He is with you.
What Suffering Is Actually Trying to Tell You
Our teaching pastor Aaron was preaching on James 5:7 that morning — patience in suffering.
I will be honest. I was relieved. You do not often hear a message on suffering on Mother’s Day. And Mother’s Day looks so very different for many of us — not only those of us who are grieving the death of a child.
He said something that stayed with me long after the service ended.
Suffering is not a sign of God’s displeasure of you. It is the soil where you can experience some of His greatest kindness.
I was trying to keep up. My mind was full and heavy and it was hard to process everything he was saying. But that line found me.
And then he gave us the roadmap — three words, straight from the Word of God, for what we do when we suffer.
Pray. Praise. Confess.
James chapter 5 holds all three. And I want to encourage you — if you have never sat down and read the book of James, please do. It is five short chapters. And it is rich beyond measure. Written by James, the half-brother of Jesus, who did not believe Jesus was who He claimed to be until he saw Him raised from the dead.
There is something in that for every one of us who has wrestled with what we believe in the middle of loss.
The Waiting Room
Suffering puts us in a waiting room.
And the waiting room is where grieving moms get the most confused — because we feel helpless there. We have no control over the death of our children. None of us do. And that feeling of helplessness can be one of the most disorienting parts of grief.
But here is what I learned sitting in that service on Sunday morning.
The fact that we have no control is actually a good thing.
We were never meant to lean on our own strength. We were never meant to move through this life thinking we are in charge. Suffering removes the veil. It levels the playing field. God does not see the clothes we wear or the car we drive or the status we carry. He sees the heart. He sees us all the same.
And for the believer — for the mom who has placed her trust in Him — the waiting room is not a place of abandonment.
The Lord is working in your waiting room right now.
In the middle of what you cannot see and cannot control, He is working. And we do not have a God who is far off or disinterested or unaware of what a day like Mother’s Day costs you. God is faithful. He is responsible. He is in control.
So what is your one job while you wait?
It is not to fix it. It is not to force peace. Nor is it to manufacture hope. No matter how hard you work or how hard you try, you cannot make yourself have either one.
Elijah could not make it rain. But he knew intimately the One who could.
Come close to God, and God will come close to you. James 4:8 NLT
Draw near. That is the whole job.
And here is how you do it — exactly the way the book of James tells us to in our suffering.
You pray. You praise. And you confess.
The Greatest Courage I Have Ever Witnessed
I want to close with something — because I do not want you to miss it.
The courage of a grieving mom to wait — and to wait with hope — is the greatest courage I have ever witnessed on this earth.
Not the courage to have all the answers. Not the courage to be okay.
The courage to draw near when everything in you wants to pull away. The courage to praise Him for what you are confident He will yet do — even when you cannot see it yet.
You are not in this waiting room alone.
You have the very presence of Almighty God living inside you — not a distant, far-off God, but One who is closer than your next breath. He is with you in the waiting. He is working in what you cannot see. And He is not finished writing your story.
Come close to God, and God will come close to you. James 4:8 NLT
May that verse be more than words on a page today. May it be the door you walk through — and may you find Him already there, waiting on the other side, with everything you need.
🎧 Listen to the Full Episode
If this touched something in you, the full episode will take you even deeper.
🎙 Episode 281: Mother’s Day Reflections: Grief, Love, and Loss on The Grief Mentor Podcast — Teresa shares her personal Mother’s Day story, what the Holy Spirit spoke over her in the middle of her grief, and what she wants every grieving mom to carry into this week.
Next Steps
✨ Grief Survival Guide
If you are newly bereaved or just finding your footing in this grief journey, the Grief Survival Guide is Teresa’s gift to you. It is the very steps she used in the earliest days of her own grief — practical, faith-rooted, and written for the mom who is just trying to get through the day.
👉 Download the Grief Survival Guide
With care and prayer, Teresa Davis
