If she were still alive, my mother would turn 97 years-old today. But she's not. She died almost 12 years ago. Some days it seems like yesterday. Others it seems like an eternity.
It is no secret that I had a strained relationship with my mother. She was a kind woman, much of the time, and a generous woman, but she was a very self-absorbed, emotionally needy woman and she looked to her children to fill that gaping void in her life and give her the validation that she craved, even if it strangled the life out of them.
I spent years as an adult trying to walk the fine line of loving and honoring her without being sucked into the vortex of unrealistic expectations and a dysfunctional, enmeshed relationship. I wasn't terribly graceful at it.
While I was there at her side when she breathed her last, I was not able to have that deathbed conversation like you see in the movies. Sometimes death is a very private and intimate affair but hers was not, what with family members filling the room, none of us ever having witnessed the end of a life.
Then again, I wouldn't have known what to say anyway. Some things need time and life experience before you have that kind of clarity.
The past several years have beat my faith to a pulp. I have had to do a lot of dismantling. Deconstructing, if you will (though I know that word means different things to different people). Before you call me a heretic, please know that I have not thrown everything away. Only the non-essentials. I have stripped it all down to the very basics. I had to.
But sitting amid the rubble of my faith, one thing stood out to me and broke my heart: my arrogance. My arrogance that it was up to me to correct my mother in her beliefs, in the way she related to God. My arrogance that my churches were better than hers because mine taught all the right beliefs and hers was wishy-washy. My arrogance that I knew better what the Bible said. My arrogance that knowing the right theology was better than a childlike faith.
Oh, that arrogance didn't form out of a vacuum. It was taught. It was pushed. I was told it was my duty to save my family members. I was told that a proper "worldview" would fix everything. In attempting to keep my mother at a needed emotional arm's length, I often used my superior theology to put her in her place. I say this to my shame.
To be totally honest, I was relieved when she died. The relief came on so many levels, as did the grief. But one thing I took comfort in: even if in life she couldn't believe that I loved her because I couldn't love her in her in the language of enmeshment, I am convinced that now she knows. She sees clearly.
I can't go back to that day in May 2009 when she let go of this world and stepped into the presence of God, but if I could, I would say this: I'm sorry, Mama. I am so, so sorry for my arrogance and for my trying to stuff you into an Evangelical box. It was so wrong on so many levels and I know it did so much damage for me to insinuate that God could only accept you if you jumped through the right hoops. I am sorry I didn't leave room for you to wrestle through your relationship with God in your own way. I am just so, so sorry.
I couldn't say it then so I'll say it now.
Oh, and Happy Birthday, Mama. I miss you. I really do.
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