Born of blood, in labour’s pain,

life contracts, and breathes again;

true love’s sacrificial start

is pregnant with a bleeding heart.

*

True love bleeds – first, to give life, then, to sustain it. To love means heartache and pain just as surely as joy. It is entering into another’s world, accepting the call to stand with another through joy and pain, sun and rain. It is choosing to give up comfort to carry another’s burdens. It is accepting the highest calling, to lay aside part of one’s own agenda to champion someone else’s. Isn’t this what God did in setting aside His divinity to become like us, to bleed on our behalf? It is a deep privilege to be called a mother, to copy in some small way the sacrificial love of our greatest Hero. Happy Mother’s Day to each of you…