Taking care of anyone is taking care of everyone
Sharing easy ideas for Holy Week at home & extra prayers from you
This week on Mothering Spirit
In her essay on the pulls between parenting and caring for parents, Claire McKeever-Burgett challenges us to see caregiving as communal work that incarnates God’s compassion for us:
“I felt torn between being with my young children and husband at home and with my parents at the hospital. And my body had its own ways of telling me it was being pulled in too many directions. I got a strange virus that sent me to bed for a full day. I had trouble sleeping. Many days, I couldn’t keep the overwhelm and anxiety at bay. I’m still finding ways to process the acute trauma from this time while still working outside the home, mothering, and partnering—not to mention, being a friend and a human, and sigh…
They call us the sandwich generation—those of us raising young children and taking care of aging parents. Here we sit and stand and lie and sometimes crawl smack dab in the middle. And what a perfectly luscious, ripe, messy middle it is.
Not barren or isolated but teeming with opportunity for love and enrichment, creativity and ritual, holiness, and sacrament. The very work of God.”
Read the rest here: Caregiving As An Act of God.
This week’s essay remembers the Covenant School shooting which took place on March 27, 2023. As we reach the one-year anniversary of this terrible loss this week, please remember in your prayers the children and adults who were killed, their families and communities, and the Covenant parents who continue to fight for safer schools for all our children. Find more prayers and resources on Mothering Spirit, too.
Claire’s powerful essay prompted us to share this prayer for caregivers—which speaks to parents who know the long, lonely work of loving, too:
Today we pray for all who do the hands-on work of love:
those whose daily labor is in the home,
those who care for young and old,
those who tend bodies, minds, and hearts in need.We pray in a special way
for all who give care but do not receive pay,
those whose work continues round the clock.
those whose labor can be dirty and demanding…
Find the rest here: A Prayer for Caregivers.
Speaking of caregiving and work for justice, Bridget Carey urges us to still, slow, stoke, and save our anger for what matters most:
Still my anger, Lord
over milk spilled
toothpaste wasted
urine everywhere but the toilet…Save my anger, Lord
for what matters most
flipping tables to right wrongs
fighting for children everywhere
instead of with my children
Read the whole prayer here: Still, Slow, Stoke, Save My Anger.
From our sponsors
This week’s sponsor of Mothering Spirit is Be A Heart Design, a modern Christian lifestyle brand that creates beautiful products to help both adults and children grow in faith.
Check out their Easter basket bundles and other gorgeous items in their Easter Shop. (We recommended their baby teethers, dolls, puzzles, scrunchies, and Jesus Heals bandaids in our gift guide, too!)
For your last-minute Easter preparation
Check out our gift guide from babies through young adults.
Need ideas for how to celebrate? Here’s how to Holy Week: a guide for where you are (including 8 easy ideas to do at home when you can’t get to church).
Want to write for us?
We’re publishing readers’ prayers on themes related to each week’s essay. Want to put your words into prayer? Here are topics we’re looking for:
Parenting teens or young adults - due 4/1
Struggles in sharing faith with children or grandchildren - due 4/8
Parenting kids with disabilities - due 4/15
Original prayers are accepted (previously published on your social media, blog, or other personal site are fine). We’ll give you full credit and copyright, and tag you on our social media when we publish. You can send us your prayer at newsletter@motheringspirit.com.
An extra prayer for you
The outpouring of prayers from our readers has been amazing. We’re grateful to you for sharing your words with us—so many that we’re going to start including extra prayers here each Saturday. Today we have a prayer for anger from Meredith Hinds—a topic we continue to hear about from readers. You are not alone.
It’s not that I’d never been angry,
But I’d never been angry like this.
The spell remained unbroken
Until I had my kids.
One afternoon of many,
My back on the bedroom door,
I prayed like I’d prayed before,
“Can’t You take it away?”
A thought rose in the quiet:
People yell when they’re afraid.
“If You do not take the anger—
Then, Father, make me brave.”
Meredith Hinds is a writer, editor, and mother who lives in Colorado with her family. When she’s not writing Saint stories for children, Meredith is probably reading with her own kids, writing about family life, or trying to find her gratitude journal. Connect with Meredith through her Substack newsletter,
If you like what you read at Mothering Spirit, we’d love if you’d share this Substack with a friend who needs encouragement in parenting—or a place to pray in the midst of busy days. Thank you for supporting our writers by sharing their work, following us on Instagram or Facebook, or supporting us on Patreon.
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I love this:
"Save my anger, Lord
for what matters most"