A Mother's Day wish for children's health care

By Rev. Linda Hanna Walling

Faithful Reform in Health Care

Another Mother’s Day came and went – the 18th for me personally, not counting the one when I was in labor with my first child who was born on the Monday after Mother’s Day.  Just before this year’s celebration, that child returned home from her first year of college, a year of some wistfulness but mostly joy as my husband and I have watched her spread her wings and fly just as we have hoped for her.  My youngest has a few years to go yet – he is still a work in progress – but day-by-day he is moving toward that time when he will take on that same exercise in self-discovery and independence.  They are both strong and whole and healthy.  And we are grateful.

Yes, another Mother’s Day came and went with the obligatory gifts and cards, shared memories, and a delightful afternoon working in my garden.  But I also remembered that this day in the United States was not originally intended to be a Hallmark moment.  For the social activist Julia Ward Howe, appalled by the carnage of the Civil War, her Mother’s Day Proclamation was a call for peace, a call for tenderness among women that would not allow our sons to be trained to injure the sons of others.  For Anna Jarvis a few years later it was a time to honor her mother who confronted unjust working conditions, assisted in both Union and Confederate encampments to control a typhoid outbreak, and worked to reconcile families divided by the war.   

Given the nature of my work, I couldn’t help but consider the mothers whose day was one of grief.  The war is different; the issues of justice are different; but the spirit of that first Mother’s Day Proclamation is timeless.  A child in Maryland... a child in Texas... a child somewhere every day lives sicker and sometimes dies because our country can’t figure out how to take of our most vulnerable. We have not acquired a measure of tenderness among ourselves that leads us to decry moral outrage at how the richest nation in the world lets its children die for lack of needed health care.

As a nation, to honor our mothers is to care about those things for which mothers care, not just on Mother’s Day, but every day.  When I think about what I do, I am not sure that I have a better explanation than to say I do this for the sake of my children... and the children everywhere in this country.  I do it for the mothers and fathers who love those children and who nurture a million dreams which emerge from the minds and hearts of those lives entrusted to us.  There is magnificent beauty in those dreams, and so much of the potential that lies within them will depend on the health and wholeness we make possible for them.

If we missed the opportunity to truly honor mothers on Mother's Day, it’s not too late!  During the first week of June, Congress will hold hearings on legislation that will impact how we move toward making health care for all children a reality in this country.  It’s a perfect opportunity for people of faith to make their voices heard, to call for a measure of tenderness that moves us toward better care for our most vulnerable.  Until we as a nation agree that everyone should get needed health care, let's at least make that a reality for our children.  It's the right - and the moral - thing to do. Let's give our mothers the Mother's Day gift they deserve!

Visit Faithful Reform in Health Care for opportunities to speak out on behalf of children's health care.