Prayer For Moms
Loving God,
Please bless every mother who has Alzheimer's disease.
She was with us children as we learned to walk.
-- Guide her uncertain steps today as her balance fails her.
She taught us to cross streets and be safe.
-- Help her not to get lost, even in her familiar surroundings.
She held us close in the terrors of the darkest nightmares.
-- May she not be frightened today by the reality of her life, which is strange and totally out of her control.
She cooked thousands of meals over decades of time.
-- Please allow her to accept the caring hand that now feeds her.
She changed diapers, Lord, and served you each time she did.
-- Please give her now the humility and grace to be served in this way.
Loving God, the familiar eyes of my mother
now respond with a blank stare.
She is unable to carry on a conversation,
to ask about her family
or to serve in the central role she has in our family.
Help her accept the surrender of her life these days.
Open her prayerful heart and fading mind
to be aware of your presence with her,
perhaps now closer than ever.
Give us, her family, the patience, courage and acceptance
to love her as she is and to support her in her daily needs.
My Loving Creator,
You know how really tired I am. On days when things are really frantic, I consider how you made the world in seven days -- and then I try to remember that you aren't asking me to re-create that feat.
Please help me to remain a loving mother to my children and to keep some balance in my life. Help me to remember that you are with me in every packed hour of every day. As I am finishing a work project or planning dinner or buying the kids shoes, (sometimes all at the same time) help me to remember your loving care for me and let me sometimes stop for a moment and just wallow in that.
Most of all, my caring Father, let me remember to ask for help and to rely on you for strength when I have none left; for patience when mine is so often gone; and for the wisdom and endless well of compassion and love I need in my job as mother.
Dear Lord, today I turn to you to give you thanks for my mother. With your own gift of life, she bore me in her womb and gave me life. She tenderly, patiently cared for me and taught me to walk and talk. She read to me and made me laugh. No one delighted in my successes more; no one could comfort me better in my failures. I am so grateful for how she mothered me and mentored me, and even disciplined me.
Please bless her, Lord, and comfort her. Help her loving heart to continue to love and give of herself to others. Strengthen her when she is down and give her hope when she is discouraged.
Most of all, Lord, on this Mother's Day, give my mother the graces she most needs and desires today. I ask you this, in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior forever and ever.
Dear Lord, I am so grateful to my birth mother for her great sacrifice and love that allowed her to give birth to me and to give me to my parents who have adopted me. I really love my family and will treasure forever the blessings they have shared with me, so generously and lovingly. I will never forget my birth mother and the very difficult choice she made, for me.
Now that I have received word that she has died, I raise her up in prayer - this woman who gave me life and with dying to self love gave me up to another family. Now that she is with you in glory, I know she is being fully rewarded for her choice and its cost to her. I know she still is my birth mother and is now in glory. I know she will love and support me and I know she knows how I now thank her with all my heart.
Dear God, she seems to bear the weight of the world on her shoulders, but to carry it more lightly than I think I would. I see her balancing work and home, money and no money, friends who no longer make time to see her, and I send up a prayer for her.
Her old friends have moved on with their lives, and in truth, she doesn't have much in common with them anymore. She is lonely, loving God. She would like company but doesn't want to make time for new relationships because her waking hours are already full: she is a mother. She walks when gas is too expensive for the car and forgoes new clothes so her child can have shoes.
This is not how her life started out, but circumstances changed from her life of privilege to this life she embraces so fully. Her life is difficult and she seems so tired much of the time, but I am inspired by the love she has for her child.
Give her the strength to put in long hours each day; the courage to face those who dismiss her with blaming and knowing nods; the ability to maintain her loving life at home; and the deepest knowledge in her heart that you love her.
My mother is gone, loving God. I am so grateful I was at her side as she breathed her last, her agony complete. She lived a full and complete life and all of us felt relieved, for a moment, when she finally slipped away to be at your side.
But now I am left with the sorrow and grief. My mother is gone. My mother who had been a part of my life for each day of it, is not here. I have such a sadness and it surprises me.
In her years of Alzheimer's, it seemed as if she died a little each day. The differences were almost invisible, but real. She responded less, sang less, prayed less. She became unsteady on her feet, then she couldn't walk, then she no longer spoke. Finally, her loving eyes gazed on me with no recognition.
Watching that decline was hard over the years and I grieved every time I saw her. I was letting her go with each visit as she slowly moved through the sacred "thin spaces" to be with us a little less each day, and as she drew a little closer to you each day.
Help me to rejoice with my mother in her new life of the resurrection. This is what her faith taught her and help that belief bring me comfort in my sorrow.
Loving God, how can I thank you for the generous woman who gave us her child? Our years of sorrow and emptiness ended with a phone call and a new child in our home. We rejoiced in the utter happiness that this birth mother - and her child - gave us then. We have received so much joy over the years.
We think of this special mother, Lord, this generous woman who bore our child. The one who went through the discomfort of pregnancy and the pains of birth - only to hand her child over to someone else to love and care for.
Please, God, bless the life of this incredibly noble woman. She gave me the great gift of motherhood, and I can imagine the cost to her: an empty spot in her own heart where this child we somehow share, will always abide.
Bless her life, dear Lord. Give her an abundance of happiness and love and family. Please let her feel the prayers we have for her on each birthday of our child, each Mother's Day. We think of her with reverence and love and inexpressible gratitude.
Good and Gentle God,
we pray in gratitude for our mothers and for all the women of theory who have joined with you in the wonder of bringing forth new life. You who became human through a woman, grant to all mothers the courage they need to face the uncertain future that life with children always brings.
Give them the strength to live and to be loved in return, not perfectly, but humanly.
Give them the faithful support of husband, family and friends as they care for the physical and spiritual growth of their children.
Give them joy and delight in their children to sustain them through the trials of motherhood. Most of all, give them the wisdom to turn to you for help when they need it most.