Three Gifts We Can Give to Our Adult Children this Mother’s Day

When I was in college, my mother would mail small packages filled with improbable gifts. Her favorite was soap. Apparently, she believed there was none available in northeast Georgia, so she would, from her meager income, purchase soap and then pay for the postage to ship it to me.

Invariably, she would also send cookies along with the soap–cookies that managed to take on the flavor and odor of the soap on that long journey from Maine to Georgia. I don’t remember if I ever told her about that…

What is it about the connection between motherhood and the need to give?

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What is it about the connection between motherhood and the need to give?

After holiday gatherings, I press leftovers on my sons as if they were facing certain starvation in their own very well-stocked kitchens. My kids don’t need me to cook for them anymore–although I’ve never known them to turn down a whoopie pie!

So what gifts can a mother give to her children–gifts that are relevant and meaningful? Let’s celebrate Mother’s Day 2023 with these three:

The Gift of an Attentive Audience

It’s been a long time since we sat in the bleachers to watch ball games or track meets, concerts or musical productions, but even so, we’re still an attentive audience to their big moments. Whether it’s a promotion at work or a newly built henhouse, we’re glad to hear about it, glad to know all the details, and we’re tuned in to listen to all the glory moments.

It’s also true that we give a gift to our children when, as much as possible, we organize our lives in such a way that we’re available to their children, our grandchildren. For me, this means I work as a substitute teacher, a job I can say no to if my daughter-in-law needs a break–or if it’s a gorgeous day and the playgrounds of MidCoast Maine are calling to us! I want to listen to my grandkids’ stories, cheer for their bicycle-riding, chapter-book-reading, Lego-building accomplishments, and let them know how important they are to me and to the God who made them.

The Gift of a Sounding Board

We decided long ago that we’d refrain (as much as possible) from giving unsolicited advice to our adult kids. They know how to find us if they want our input, so whenever they come to us, we try to listen first. Open-ended questions keep them talking so we can discover exactly what’s at stake, and most of the time what they’re really looking for is not an answer but just a place to process out loud all the good thoughts they already have about their decision-making process.

In None Like Him, Jen Wilkin warns readers against the tendency to usurp the incommunicable attributes of God — those qualities of deity that are his alone. Nowhere is this more of a temptation for me than in parenting. God will stop at nothing to pour his holiness, justice, and patience into the love I have for my kids, but what I really covet is his sovereignty. When I become “wise in my own sight,” in awe of my own cobbled-together wisdom, I am rescued from this misplaced awe by the truth that God’s wisdom flows from his unlimited authority.

By entrusting my family to God’s sovereign plan for each member, I am enabled to release the death grip on my desire to control and manage things from my limited perspective.

The Gift of Respectful Boundaries

“It’s an invitation, not a summons” is a phrase that’s found its way into our family’s vocabulary, and it’s motivated by Paul’s words to believers in a fledgling church in Rome:

If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

Romans 12:18

The old adage “Good fences make good neighbors” applies to families as well. An invitation is not a summons, and missing a family gathering is not a shun-able offense. Rejecting unrealistic expectations, refusing to manipulate with guilt, and saying no to the insidious tendency to keep score (as if our fellow in-law counterparts are the competition) are all ways of declaring war in this battle for peace. And because each temptation is subtle and inward, they are the part that “depends on me” with the Spirit’s enablement.

To be sure, I have been married longer than my kids and their spouses have been alive, I have parented a number of children, and I could devise all manner of additional rationalizations for playing the mum card, offering gratuitous advice, or harboring resentment. But if I want to live peaceably with my sons and their families, I must respect the God-given boundaries that have been established since the words leave and cleave drifted from the mouth of God into Eden’s clear air.

Extend Grace. Take Grace.

The further time carries me from those soapy cookies, the more tenderly I view the effort Mum made, and the more grace I extend to the memory of her efforts to be helpful and giving.

The more aware I become of my own mothering failures, the more grace dependent I become, and the more I appreciate the forbearance of my kids and their willingness to laugh at my idiosyncrasies. If the words on my tombstone are simply, “She meant well,” and my family realizes that I truly did, I will be grateful.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Holding You in the Light,

Celebrate Mother’s Day 2023 with these three gifts to your adult children: The gift of an attentive audience, the gift of a sounding board, and the gift of respectful boundaries.

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