Grace

I've awoken at 2:30 the past few mornings. Laying in the darkness, listening to the night sounds in my house. My heart races and I can't get comfortable.

I noticed my mom had lost weight. She's always been slim. She discusses weight issues of others and frequently discusses her diet. I have been vaguely unsettled about her weight loss, but wondered if it's because of my own weight gain. 

But colon cancer? I didn't see that one coming. 

My mother has been a complex character for me. Growing up, she wasn't social. Our outings were going to the grocery store. (I remember her smoking while shopping, and throwing the cigarette butt on the ground and crushing it at the end of an aisle.) She'd always have the inevitable case of beer on the bottom of the shopping cart. I knew few friends of hers. We didn't have dinner parties.  

She made me so angry. She told me things like "I had you to save my marriage with your dad. But you were a girl so it didn't work." Or "You would be so pretty if ________________." The blank was always something I had no control over.

Then, the darkest of days came. After finding that my stepfather had an inappropriate relationship with me, she left me and moved 2 states away with him. Her actions were evidence to my hypothesis that she ever loved me.

After decades of no to little communication, she moved back to my home city. Her new husband needed an environment like ours due to health reasons. Not "I missed you." Not "I wanted to know your children."

Obviously, she was an unhappy, sick woman. This became more evident when she attempted suicide 3 times in a few short months. Visiting her at the Pavillion prompted me to say to her doctor "She's unhappy with herself. She drinks to self-medicate. Something is wrong with this woman."

My husband and I drove her to a treatment facility a few hours away. We took her husband several weeks later to visit. She seemed like the same uptight, uncomfortable person. Maybe she was't drinking, but she still wasn't right. Anxiety? Depression? What was it?

Time went by. Maybe she drank after treatment, maybe she didn't. I realized it wasn't my issue. It was her demon to fight.

But, she started attending church. She began to understand Jesus and his gift to us. She began to make friends. She got a job and was happy. Who was this woman?

My siblings had cut her out of their life. They didn't want or need that dysfunction anymore. I felt obligated to be a part of my mother's life. It was my burden to bear. I was an unwilling participant, the martyr. 

My mother and I started doing things together. Choir, mission trips to China and the Dominican Republic. Even a girls weekend in Santa Fe. I realized that this woman was not the same person she was 5 years ago. Out from under the fog of alcohol, she blossomed. She made friends without me. She didn't HAVE to have me in her life, but WANTED me in her life. 

My pastor seems to talk to me during the sermon every week. It's like God says "Michelle needs you to say ____________ so she can grow in her walk with Jesus." It's quite annoying at times, and makes me hold my pastor at arms length. I feel like I am so close to Dr. Batson, but I can't even talk to him because I feel he can see darkness in my flawed soul. 

One week, Dr. Batson shared a forgiveness sermon. Again, he was speaking to me. I was choosing to use my horrible childhood as a shield to protect myself. I was a martyr to no one. Trying to be friends with my mother and resent her was only messing with my psyche. I had to let it go. Let go of all the resentment, anger, and ugliness that consumed me. I prayed. I prayed like I'd never prayed before. And, I let it go. 

It was beautiful to let it go.

So, I opened my heart to love my mother. She is not the woman who raised me. She is a uniquely different person. And I love this woman. 

And now she has cancer.

I know it doesn't have to be a death sentence. My own husband is thriving, and he was expected to die 6 years ago. But, my mom's cancer gives me pause. 

But I am joyful that she knows Jesus. Thank God. 

In a Just World

If I had omnipotent power at my place of employment, I would enact the following policies:

1) Under no circumstances is the workplace microwave to be used for your offending odoriferous leftovers. I am so tired of opening the microwave, only to be greeted with your Penne Pasta & Eau de Derriere sauce. Please, I'm begging you... stop.

2) You're sleeping with the boss? You're fired. Enough said.

3) Gossips will not be tolerated. When gossip makes it back to me, which is inevitably does, I will go from person to person to track down the instigator. I will then help the instigator pack.

4) You will be paid according to your productivity. I'm so tired of those that blatantly do nothing, and are paid more than their hard working co-workers, simply because of favoritism or tenure. (or sleeping with the boss. Enough said.)

That's it in a nutshell. Easy enough. Don't offend others. Get paid according to your output. If only it were that simple.

Unchain my Heart

The dress was a labor of love, created by my adoring grandmother. She chose the pattern, the style, and the fasteners. I remember feeling like a million dollars wearing it into Ms. Erickson's kindergarten class in Emporia, Kansas.

As the day progressed, my hair became tangled in the snap at the top of the back of my neck. I assume that it began with one tendril that looped around the snap. During sporadic intervals, I would take a few strands of my hair, and try to "unloop" that part from the snap. The more I tried to untangle my thick mesh of curls from that cursed snap, the bigger snarl I would create.

That afternoon, I went home and showed it to my mother. She simply unfastened the snap, and freed the giant mat of hair from it's prion. I was left with an entanglement the size of my fist. My mom painfully, albeit carefully, used half a bottle of Johnson's No More Tears on my rats nest as she tried to straighten my mess.

This reminds me of the problem I have with forgiveness. This situation will arise where I have been wronged (the tendril in the snap.). Instead of forgiving, I will start to make excuses (trying to take a few strands and unloop that part from the snap.). "That sin is too big for me to forgive, God will have to forgive them." "If they really loved me, they wouldn't have ever done that." Then, I'm left with the pain of the "tangle."

I want to be a strong example of the Christian life. Yet, the one line "And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us" in the Lord's Prayer can really give me the heebiejeebies. If I am to be forgiven as I forgive, I'm not truly forgiven. If I turn to God and ask Him to "unsnap" the burden from my life, I will not have to be weighed down by my burden.

I don't want to seem "preachy." I don't want to oversimplify the enormity of the burdens in your own life. I just think that I, personally, carry around weight that should be thrown overboard. I worry about things that I can't control, and obsess over scenarios that may never happen. But, as a Christian, I should occupy my time with more constructive objectives.

Perhaps the next time I am "wronged," I'll turn to God to free my burden from being fastened upon my heart.