As the holidays approach, I’m focused on how each moment I breathe is precious. Homesick doesn’t even describe how much I miss the closeness of family and friends. The one person I find myself missing more than I expected this year is my mother. We didn’t have the best relationship, but what we shared in my short time with her in Georgia has changed my heart in a way I never expected.
It was during those short four years I found out just how much we shared and how much we hid from each other. We shared a deep love for the written word and for God. We had both experienced devastating hurt and disappointment being part of a church. We both felt rejection from people we loved. My mommy was funny and she hid her pain and emotions very well.
You would think those would be things I’d have to be around her to learn or imitate. She passed these things on by giving birth to me. The thirty years of separation can’t stop what is obviously genetic. Honestly, there hasn’t been a day in the last six years that I haven’t longed to pick up the phone and share with my mother.
I have even found myself looking up and telling her stuff. I know it’s silly because she already knows. I believe she is sitting with Jesus laughing at me. I can picture her telling Jesus how silly I was being, when all the things I need to get by she gave me. Oh what an image!
Well I’m not going to sit here and dwell on something I cannot change. I have to shake off the sadness and marvel in the glory of knowing she is now really making intercession for me. She no longer has to visualize carrying any of her children to the throne asking God to work on us, she can get in His presence and make her demands. Oh man, that image makes me laugh. If you knew my mother, you would understand.
Another thing my mother also gave me was an emptiness. An emptiness that left me vulnerable and seeking that maternal love in the world. I realized the friends I met along the way who had the mother-daughter relationships I longed for, were the ones I inserted myself as deep as I could. Trying desperately to fill the hole in my soul. Wanting to have the guidance and encouragement a mother is supposed to give her daughter.
God did hear and feel my pain and he sent me to a place to find the external emotional support, but the wholeness was still not manifested. I had thought when I had my children they would fill the void, but truth is they were only temporary plugs. Because when they grew up they didn’t need me anymore. And once again I was searching for healing and wholeness.
I have many people in my life whom I love very much and appreciate some of them for sticking by me through some of my struggles. In the struggles the one thing I have been able to hold tight to is the Love and desire I have to keep God first in my life. To serve his people in the best way I can and to be a demonstration of a faithful, loving God.
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