(This is a prayer I have written for a Birth Mother’s Celebration in which I will be participating tomorrow. I offer it here. It is for more than Birth Mothers.  Feel free to use, and adapt so it fits your uses.  I would appreciate you directing people back to this post if you use the prayer. Thank you. You can read more of my experience with adoption on this page.)

I offer this prayer in gratitude for my birth mother, Sophia, for my mother, Esther, and for Eric’s mother, Sandy. And of course, with great love for Eric, Alden, and Elliott who made me a mother.

God, you are the God of all of the moments of our lives—our celebrations and our mournings. Today we come to you with both. We thank you this day for birth mothers; for their strength and courage in situations of pain and loss.

We ask for your sheltering presence and healing in their lives, renewing their strength and restoring them to wholeness.

We ask for your illuminating presence in their lives, making clear the path upon which they are journeying.

We give you thanks for the gift of the children of adoption.
For the gift of life, and health, and promise, and future, we give you thanks.
Before these children were born, you knew them.
You knit them together in their birth mother’s womb.

May they grow to know they are your beloved children, made perfectly in your image.

May they know your love as parent, and may they know the love of their birth mothers who gave them up in faith, secure in your promise of a future, with hope.

And today we give you thanks for new families created from adoption. We thank you for the love these parents have for the children they have welcomed into their lives.

May that love continue to grow each day.

Bless their homes, O God.

We ask for wisdom, that they may share their knowledge in love with their children and teach them of your love, and grace, and providence.

We ask for compassion, that they may remember the birth parents with love and appreciation, teaching their child of the love of their birth family.

We ask you to help them know abundance, that they may trust that there is more than enough love to go around.

May they see your presence in their lives and extend your love to those whom they meet.

Hear our prayers for all those people who feel pain in the celebration of Mother’s Day this weekend.

For those whose mothers have died and for those whose relationships with their mothers is difficult, bring peace.

For those who seek to be mothers, and for those women who do not want to be defined as mothers, bring comfort.

For those mothers who mourn the loss of their children, bring the peace that only you can offer, Lord. Because our words are inadequate in such situations, may they not also be hurtful.

God, we give you thanks for adopting us all, for welcoming us into your family.

We are comforted by the knowledge that you are a birth parent, who relinquished your son, Jesus, into the adopting family of Mary and Joseph.

We are comforted by knowing that you are an adopting parent, and that it is by adoption that we become children of your kingdom, as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Help us to see your face in the face of our brothers and sisters.

Help us to treat each other as family, to extend your love to all of your children.

Hear the words of our hearts, the cries of our souls, and the hope of our faith.

In the name of your son, Jesus the Christ, we pray.
Amen