There’s a verse that can feel like a promise and a wound at the same time:
Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house;
your children will be like olive shoots around your table.~ Psalm 128:3
And if you’re a mother who’s prayed, labored, loved, disciplined, shown up when it’s hard, or stayed when it hurt . . . this verse can feel like it’s describing someone else’s life.
Because maybe your table feels empty.
Maybe your “olive shoots” have wandered.
Maybe the fruit you expected hasn’t come in the way you believed it would.
And the ache is deep, not just because of what is, but because of everything you poured out in faith and believed would be.
God sees all of that.
He sees the late nights and tears after hard conversations. He sees the prayers whispered over sleeping children who don’t walk with him now. He sees the tension between what you believed would happen and what currently is.
But this verse was never meant to be a scoreboard for your motherhood. It’s not proof that you did everything right or evidence that you somehow failed.
It’s a picture of blessing in its fullness.
And here’s the truth we have to hold on to with white knuckles sometimes: The story isn’t over.
Olive trees take years to mature. Years.
What looks like barrenness can actually be a season of unseen rooting. What feels like loss can still become redemption. What seems distant can still be drawn back by a God who pursues better than we ever could.
You were called to be faithful, not to control the outcome.
And your faithfulness matters. It always has.
So if Mother’s Day feels more like grief than celebration, you’re not alone. You are not forgotten. And you are not standing at the end of the story.
God is still writing. Still pursuing. Still restoring.
And one day, whether in ways you can see now or only in eternity, you’ll understand how every tear, every prayer, every act of love was held, used, and never wasted.
Hold on, mama.
The table may not look like you hoped today . . . but the Gardener is not finished yet.
Brook Taylor is one of the authors of The World Rejoices: The Good News of Christmas Devotional.
