It’s three o’clock in the morning and I’m
awake. I had a dream about my mom. I’ve been thinking about her a lot
lately. Helen, the woman who runs the
orphanage here in Ometepe, Nicaragua, left yesterday to go home to Costa Rica
because her mother had passed away. I
found out that she had died from cancer, which is what my mom died of a little
over a year ago. I had also recently
found out that one of our World Race staff members has also been dealing with a
mother who is battling cancer. It seems
to be all around me. So I’ve been
thinking about my mom a lot.
In my dream, I was having a dream about my mom. We were arguing in my dream. It seems like my mom and I were always
arguing. Even about the silliest
things. On the night before my wedding
day, my mom was upset because all of my friends had said how much I looked like
my mom’s youngest sister. Somehow, my
mom interpreted this to mean that she looked like some kind of troll, and she
was pretty upset about it. I attempted
to console her, but reminded her that it was the night before my wedding day
and not really about her at the moment.
That didn’t go over well.
My mom had a really difficult time saying, “I’m
sorry.” It seemed like an impossible
task to even attempt to get her to apologize whenever she hurt my feelings, but
I would always try none the less. And it
would be the most frustrating thing in the world. Somehow, she would always turn it around so
that she was the one who had been wronged and I was the one who should
apologize. I would always walk away from
these arguments hurting even more than if I had just left it alone.
It has taken me a long time to realize why my mom
was like this. And I’m definitely still
learning. My mom had an impossibly
difficult childhood, which carried over into the rest of her life. She was raised by a neglectful mother and an
alcoholic father. Both were emotionally
absent. Both were verbally and
physically abusive. My mother had six
other siblings. She was the second
oldest so she and her older sister raised most of their siblings since her
parents weren’t all that interested in taking care of their children.
Needless to say, my mom put up walls. In order to protect herself and all of the
open wounds her parents had inflicted upon her, she guarded herself to such an
extent that no one could penetrate those walls.
She became an emotionally closed book.
She was not going to allow anyone into a place where they could ever hurt
her again. She distanced herself from
the people around her. She taught me to
do the same. She thought she was
protecting me. She told me things like,
“Never let anyone see you cry. Never let
someone know they’ve hurt you.” In my
whole life, I think I saw my mom cry a handful of times. And most of those times were by accident. I remember once when I was younger, around
five or six years old. I went looking
for my mom and I found her, sitting on the floor of her closet weeping. I’ve never been able to get that image out of
my head.
So, in my dream, I was having a dream about arguing
with my mom. I was trying to tell her
how she had done something that hurt my feelings, but I was getting
nowhere. I couldn’t get her to
understand. I couldn’t get her to
apologize. When I woke up (but this part
was still a dream too), I told Brad about it.
I told him how frustrating it was that my mom could never
apologize. That she was always the
victim. That she had always been wronged
in some way.
Brad said he needed to tell me something, and that I
needed to hear him out. I knew what he
was going to say. That I was just like
her. He’s told me that before. A lot of people have told me that before. And I see it too! I’m horrible at admitting when I am wrong,
especially to the people I love the most.
I get so stuck on how I’m feeling, that I don’t take the time to stand
back and see how I might be affecting someone else. I’m naturally defensive, just like she
was. I feel like I had a difficult
childhood, and so I have an excuse for acting the way I do sometimes. And that’s exactly what my mom used to do
that would make me absolutely insane.
So I hate when people tell me I’m just like my
mom. Because I don’t want to be like
her. I don’t want to be the kind of
person who can’t say, “I’m sorry.” I
don’t want to be someone who can’t get past my own hurt to see how I’ve hurt
someone else. I don’t want to be the
kind of person who always has to let people know that I was wronged. I want to be forgiving. I want to be humble. I want to be full of grace and compassion. I want to take responsibility for my
wrongdoings so that I may be made whole in Christ. Jesus asks, “And why do you look at the speck
in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye (Matt
7:3)?
But that’s not what Brad had to tell me at all. What he had to say was something he had never
said before. He said that I should be
careful. He said that if I wasn’t
careful, I was going to lose my mom.
Hello? I
already lost my mom! I was there! I stood by helplessly as the cancer
deteriorated her body, and my heart still breaks when some of those memories
come back to me. What was he talking
about? How was I going to lose her
again?
And he said, “If you’re not careful, you’re going to
lose the memory of her.”
And that hit me like a ton of bricks!
I knew what he was saying. Even though I was dreaming, it still made
sense when I woke up. He meant that if I
keep focusing on all of the arguments I had with my mom over the years, and how
frustrating it was that my mom could never apologize, I am going to lose the
memories of all the wonderful times I had with her.
I have to let my mom off the hook. I have to forgive her for not being good at
apologizing.
I’m pretty sure Brad played the role of God in my
dream (he’s going to love that!). God
has this amazing way of always speaking to us, and wanting to teach us. And when we don’t learn, He tries new ways of
teaching us until we finally get it. In
my case, God visited me in a dream, and spoke to me through someone I love and
respect. He knew that He could get
through to me that way. And He did!
So now begins the hard part. Letting go.
It’s easy to say you forgive someone.
It’s easy to say, “God, I’m letting that person off the hook.” But our heart doesn’t always go along with
what we’re saying. So how do we really
forgive someone and let that person off the hook, if our heart is stuck?
Forgiveness is a choice. It doesn’t come naturally to us at all. Otherwise, Jesus wouldn’t have had to remind
us again and again just how important it is.
What we seem to forget is that forgiveness is just as much for us as for
the person who we are forgiving. When we
allow unforgiveness to fester in our hearts, it eventually leads to bitterness
and disdain. That bitterness is poison,
and it eats away at our hearts and infects others around us. Paul wrote, “Do not let sin reign in your
mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts…Do you not know that to whom
you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey,
whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness”
(Romans 6:12-16). Which one of these
things do we want to be? Who do we want
to present ourselves servants to? Doesn’t
it take so much more energy to stay angry with someone than to forgive them? And doesn’t it bring us so much more relief
and freedom when we finally make the choice to forgive someone?
Jesus says, “Let all bitterness, wrath, anger,
clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted,
forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you (Eph 4:31-32). If Jesus Christ, the King of Kings and Lord
of Lords, the Creator of the Universe, can forgive me everything I had done to
fall short of the glory of God time and time again, surely I can find it in my
heart to forgive others! Surely I do not
think that I have suffered more than Jesus, who was betrayed by the very people
He came to save!
And when we make the choice to forgive someone, we
are letting them off the hook. We are
setting them free. Jesus said whoever we
forgive, He also forgives. “If you
forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any,
they are retained” (John 20:23). I don’t
want to stand in the way of someone being forgiven their sins. I don’t want to hold onto my anger.
I know it will be difficult. And I know it will take time. But I want to make the choice to forgive my
mom. And if I continue to say that, if I
continue to hold myself to that, my heart will eventually follow. And then I will never lose her. She will live on forever in my memories. Memories of all the good times we had
together. Memories of the amazing mother
she really was.
So I was wondering if you guys back home could do me a favor? If you knew my mom, please post a favorite memory of her. Especially if it’s a memory of her with her kids. I want to spend some time remembering all of the wonderful things about her, and I would love to hear some of the memories you guys have of her. Thanks! Love you all!
