I’ve been debating whether to write this blog. Why?
Honestly… because I know it’s going to upset some people.
But writing is healing for me when I’m trying to process what is going on in my head.
So, here it goes.
I miss my mom. Or the idea of my mom.
Many know there is an estranged relationship there, and it’s almost always been that way.
Why? In short, I have to believe my mother and I are two very different people who expect something out of the other they just aren’t capable of giving.
But that doesn’t mean my mom hasn’t impacted me ways I’ll never forget.
Daily I recall lessons, truths, and advice she gave to me as a young girl before things got bad. Some of it as simple as, “You really know a person when you know their favorite candy bar and favorite color,” or “Let it roll off of you like water off a duck’s back,” or one of my favorites, “Be the friend you want to have, even if they aren’t that way back to you. ALWAYS take the high road.”
I know those sound like such cliches, but I think my mom knew I would struggle with these lessons throughout my life; and through different seasons and layers would need to be reminded of these simple truths.
I have distant, happy memories with my mom. I grew up homeschooled with my five younger siblings. My dad has a job that kept him traveling, and still does.
I didn’t hate my life growing up. I had such a good life. That doesn’t mean I was easy to raise.
I’m a strong-willed, independent, fiery, justice-seeking soul. I don’t lay down quietly when I know something isn’t right. And trust me, there were a lot of fights that I was so in the wrong in.
But I’ve grown up since then. But my relationship with my mom never did. It’s still stuck in those dark years when we were at odds.
Even before those years, I was never really close to my mom. Probably because she was always pregnant or had a baby on her hip. She was homeschooling and basically raising us on her own most of the week while dad traveled to provide to put food on the table.
I don’t blame them. It’s just the way it was.
But this week it’s just hard. I miss my mom. Or the idea of a mom.
I want to be able to call my mom in the middle of the afternoon in tears because there just aren’t enough hours in the day to work, organize a fundraiser, do the dishes, go back and forth the laundry mat, be a wife, cook dinner, pick up food donations from Starbucks, change my name on my passport, and get my hair done all before I need to be in bed by 8:30.
Normal wife stuff I know. But I’m still new at that too.
I just want to call my mom when I was nominated for my very first APME award for a story I covered for five days in Northwest Tennessee.
I just want to call my mom to tell her how awesome our fundraiser went last night.
But I can’t.
We don’t speak. About anything.
How do you handle that kind of void?
I had a little bit of a breakthrough this week talking with my dear Racer friend, the other old married lady ;-P. We were talking about how we didn’t want successful relationships in our lives to hurt others. That’s the gist.
And it hit me: that’s what I deal with everyday.
Most of my friends have a great relationship with their mom, or at least a semi-functioning one. I see it everyday. I know most of their moms. They have adopted me! So many women have loved on me, and I’m eternally in their debt.
But that doesn’t mean I have my mom.
I’ve been blessed throughout my life to have always had such an amazing support group of older women who have invested in me.
I’ve been caught by grace.
It’s ok to hurt. It’s ok to miss something. I miss my mom. And that pain will lessen each day. And it will grow. All I can do is pray that Papa uses that pain as we travel on the race . When I work with orphans, girls that were sold or abandoned by their mother. I haven’t lived through any of those terrors. I can in no way imagine all their pain.
But I can relate. I know that void. And through that void, soli deo gloria.
