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For all the potential landmines, Mother's Day Sunday was really lovely at our church yesterday. We did traditional honoring of mothers w/ full pews & potted plants but slipped in some unexpected angles.
In kids SS, we did a lesson on Amy Carmichael as "mother to the motherless" & then prepped small gift for our mothers.
In worship, we sang "What Child Is This?" & my husband preached from The Magnificat, teaching how God used motherhood to initiate the redemption, not only of the pain associated w/ motherhood, but of the whole world.
Then as we were leaving we all stood around and looked at a baby snapping turtle in the parking lot. 
In seems to me, that the best way to avoid the minefield of a topic like motherhood isn't to avoid it, but to say what God says about it. To speak openly of the brokenness that surrounds it, but to also celebrate how God makes all broken things new thru Christ.
To celebrate both physical & spiritual motherhood--to tell the truth about the paradox of our identities as both material & immaterial.
To situate the conversation, not only in our personal & regional traditions, but to recognize the universality of it & how something like motherhood transcends cultures, times, & places. To bring out the essential humanity of it.
All that to say, in the high stakes game of Mother's Day Sunday, I'll see your controversies about women preaching & raise you the possibility of a beautiful orthodoxy that makes place to honor what God honors in the way He honors it.
Also, baby snapping turtles are really fast.
