What would Mom think?

(This is another recycled post from my previous blog right after my mother died. This was how I processed the hurt.)

     To quote a classic line in a classic movie, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," anymore. Sorry for the language, if some of you are offended, but there is no other appropriate response. I had arrived home from my two week trip to Hell up north. Yes, I said Hell up north. I had to go home to watch my mother die, then manage through her funeral, my first one, in a receiving line. It was brutal. The absolute worst part of that trip was being there with my siblings who don't like me.  I never understood why until I did the unthinkable. Confession time! I read Mom's emails that she sent to my siblings and her friends about me over the last couple of years. I was only interested in what she said about me, and I got an eye full. WOW! I knew my Mom could be a Jekyll and Hyde, but I never thought more Hyde than Jekyll. Mind you, I love my mom, like most daughters do. I'm going to miss her, like anyone else, and a part of me has died with her. I, however, understood my mom, maybe even better than my five siblings, because I am a chip off the old block. I am exactly like her. We clashed a whole lot while I was growing up, and they were nuclear. Now, that's not uncommon, we all go through spells, some worse than others, but the stories I could tell would curl or uncurl your hair. I won't even dare to go into any details out of respect, just know this, my mom was reacting to six decades of her mom rejecting her. My grandmother was reacting to nine decades of her mom rejecting her.  I'm the only one who gets it, and gets another chance to get it right. I'm reliving those nightmare days with an 18 year old who is just like me. This time, I've tried to do it right, and whenever I used to stick up with my "clone," because I understood her, my other children accused me of favoring her. I had to stop going to that extreme, and it went south from there.

    Mom never received acceptance or approval by anyone, unless she was pregnant. When that baby was born, a new person loved her crazy, and that was something that was missing her whole life.  According to my father, life for the toddler above that baby didn't go so well when a new one came, the older ones were virtually invisible to mom. This was all according to the man who hated my mother worse than she hated herself, my Dad. It's all he said, she said, what does it matter what stories are told from whomever's perspective? Six children were irreparably damaged from their dysfunctional life and marriage. When the marriage ended, my mother went berserk and  demanded, within inches of our lives, total devotion and loyalty to her, and we were REQUIRED to hate our father. She made life a living hell for us, because she didn't have Jesus. She taught us to reject people before they get a chance to reject you. Guess who resisted! Every little fit Mom took, I got blamed for, because I wouldn't put up with her nonsense.  None of us really understood her then.  We hated and loved our mother at the same time. 

 Now, I know that GOD called me to something different! Jesus called me out of that rejection cycle, and gave me a chance to live my mother's history all over again and right the wrongs. Let me tell you, I'm doing my best, but definitely failing most of the time. My 18 year-old clone gets mad at the grass for being green because I said it was green. That's how I was with my Mom. I probably antagonized her a bit too much, we do that at 18 years-old. Yet, here I am, old as dirt and I know that there is no mistake so big that we can make that GOD can't fix. Phew! What a relief to know that. You know, it took Jacob in Genesis one hundred years to finally get it right? So, I have some play room, here.

   The last few years of her life were really rough for me. I pretty much had stopped calling mom, because the conversations were mostly negative. She scoffed at everything I did, every word I said. I know she favored my husband over me. She never disapproved of him leaving me. In a small way, I think she was glad.  My mom wanted me to fail, because I didn't do what she approved of, I didn't get a college degree.  I lived her life over again and became a stay-at-home mother to a large brood.  The only difference was I had two more than she did.  She disapproved, and she always let me know it. Whenever I spoke about my writing or my books, she couldn't believe GOD could call me for anything special. She didn't believe, because she had her own pre-conceived, but erroneous concept of who is GOD. She surely didn't believe I was anybody special to Him. That week she died, I finally realized that I've been in prison all this time. I've been in "What Would Mom Think Prison." I've been trapped by a spirit of unbelief, knowing anything I told mom about my writing or work for GOD meant absolutely nothing to her, and she did not approve. In fact, I knew in my heart, regardless of what I did, mom would never approve of me, but I kept trying. She even said, "I disapprove" over and over for the five and a half decades that I knew her. I never realized until after she died, just how hard I had been working to accomplish the impossible. I never approved of the mother she was, yet, I was trying to get my mother to approve of me. Isn't that ironic? I had real worth in the Kingdom of heaven, and I kept trying to prove that to her when the Kingdom of Heaven never meant anything to her. I'm free, now. I never have to think that way again. 

    Now, GOD can do whatever He wants or planned to do with me, and I don't have to worry about Mom 'poking' fun at my delusions of grandeur. I wonder just how many billions of daughters and sons out there are trapped in the dungeon of disapproval, and who will like me, finally be able to breath the fresh air of freedom.