Sunday 8 May 2022

Mother's Day

I skipped over Easter for some reason this year--that defining day in the life of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, when he atoned for our sins and rose from the dead so that we might have eternal life and earn the privileged of returning to his presence one day. I love him with all my heart and am so thankful for the gift he gave to all mankind regardless of their life circumstances or what they choose to do. His supreme gift is one that should never be forgotten. But in a way I feel even closer to him than I did in April on this particular Mother's Day. Perhaps that's because I've read a little more about his mother, Mary, the past few Weeks.

What an extraordinary, spiritual and amazing woman she was to have been chosen to be his earthly mother. We don't know much about her from the scriptures but she had to have known how remarkable he would be from from the very beginning and what an incredible responsibility she had to help prepare him for such a divine and important mission. Tears fill my eye just as they do when I think of our mother, Eve, and the choice she made between staying in the Garden of Eden where life would remain perfect and bringing life and death into the world so all of God's children would have the chance to come here.

It breaks my heart to see all the people protesting Mother's Day in front of churches in our country on this special day. I never thought I would live to see such selfish, blatant and hateful disregard for the sanctity of life and religious freedom. Each person on earth has a mother who was willing to go through the perils of carrying a child, not knowing how he or she would turn out, but hopeful each one would bring love, acceptance and joy into the lives of so many others. 

And regardless of what some would-be comics on television say to get a laugh, not one woman I have ever known has not mourned for a child lost through miscarriage. These little ones were loved, wanted and cherished from the moment of conception and the hurt never goes away. I know this from losing every baby I ever tried to carry. Motherhood is the supreme gift of being a woman and our bodies were specifically designed for such a glorious challenge.

Mine was not a happy, peaceful home growing up. There was little laughter, nurturing or guidance, and I've had a hard time over the years trying to understand why I never felt like my own mother loved me. I know it began when I was five and she blamed me for the farm accident that nearly cost my three-year old brother his life. Her very words were. "If you had been watching him the way I told you to this never would have happened." He was in a coma for six weeks and when he came out of it the right side of his body was paralyzed. He demanded constant attention and care as he struggled to survive and began learning how to do even the most basic things again. I became his guardian and would sleep on the floor by the side of his crib. Needless to say, our home was never the same again. The constant stress and tension could be felt by every one of us.

When I was nine, I was confined to bed for six months with Rheumatic Fever. My mother had joined the work force to help pay all the medical bills and I was left on my own on a chair and footstool combination during the long hours of the day with only my father to check on me at irregular times when he came in from the fields. I was only allowed to stand up when I needed to go to the bathroom or went to my weekly doctor's appointments. At ten, I had sufficiently recovered and was given violin lessons, even though I knew we couldn't afford them. I wanted to play the piano, but that wasn't the worst thing about that experience. My teacher, an old man with white, pulp hands, began to molest me. I was too young to understand what was going on but the horror I felt grew to the point that I was pulling out all my eyebrows and eyelashes. When I told my mother, she said he had never touched her so he couldn't be doing anything to me. Things were very different then.

After my father died when I was thirteen, leaving seven children ages fifteen to one, my mother had a mental breakdown but never missed a day of work. Our home life was horrible and she began to do some very uncharacteristic things that impacted a few of us siblings so much that we have never recovered from them. At one point she came after me with a butcher knife because I wouldn't go along with something she was doing that I knew was wrong. I ended up running away from home a few months later never to return. 

I saw her occasionally after that, but it cost lots of money to make long distance phone calls in those days and traveling more than a few miles from home was seldom done for the same reason. She would remember Christmas and birthdays but I could never talk to her about anything that was important, especially the decision to marry a man I somehow knew would not be good for me. I think one of the reasons I married him was simply because he didn't like her because of the way she treated me. When I finally left him after 22 years of similar emotional abuse all she said was. "Maybe you should reconsider. You're not attractive to find anyone else."

And when she got cancer and had only few months to live, I was told I could only see her for twenty to thirty minutes once a week. My job was to type up all my grandmother's short stories and readings and put them into binders so all my siblings could have one. I didn't even get to tell her goodbye the day she died, even though I was at her house when it happened. It was a rather bitter pill to take.

I don't write these things for any other reason than to let you know that even though life with my mother was not at all I wished it could have been, she was trying to do her best in some very trying circumstances that were too painful for her to even talk about. I guess I better understand now because of all the mistakes I've made with my own children. Not that I didn't love and nature them with every fiber of being. If anything, I was too protective because I had to work so hard to have them in my life and knew that one day they would each find their biologicals mothers and I would have to decide how I was going to react to that. 

That's happened now, and it's been hard. But I have come to realize that every child needs many good women for support throughout their lives. Perhaps that's why teaching has always been such a passion for me. I've always felt like my students were part of my family and treated them as such, even when they least deserved it. My grandmother--who died when I was nineteen--an older neighbor and several teachers who took me under their wings provided that stability, hope and encouragement for me. I would never have survived without them.

So on this special day I really am thankful that my mother did not decide to get rid of me because I was an inconvenience or she may not have wanted me as much as she could have. Life has not been easy but the opportunities for refinement and growth have taught me more than I thought possible. I just hope we'll have time to really talk when I get to heaven. I think we'll both be in a better, more understanding, place then. Without mothers mankind would be lost. They bring life, purpose and hope into the world. May God bless each one of them with added wisdom, understanding, patience and love.