More revelations!
I’m on a mission now—to remember my mom and my childhood through new eyes. I’m intentionally looking for the ways my mom may have loved me that I couldn’t recognize or receive as a child.
Last week, while driving, a memory surfaced. I started thinking about all the people my mom arranged to care for us while she worked and went to school. Over time, we would bond with some of those couples—and they with us. A few even wanted to adopt us. But eventually, Mom would move us again, placing us with another family.
As a child, I was angry about all the constant moving. I never felt settled, and just when I felt safe or attached, we’d be whisked away again. But in that moment last week, I had a new thought—maybe that was one of the ways she loved us.
How much easier it would have been for her, as a single mom, to just give up—to let someone else take over. But she didn’t. She fought to keep us. She worked hard, went to school, and held on to custody even when it would have been easier to let go. She didn’t give us away. That realization shook me. Her way of loving us may have looked different… but it was love.
Later, on Friday morning, Tom and I were talking and he asked if I had thought of more ways my mom might have loved me. I shared that realization with him. Then he said something that took my breath away:
“Considering how emotionally crippled your mom was… imagine if that emotional brokenness was visible in her physical body.”
And then, the Lord gave him a vivid mental image. Tom described how, if her emotional wounds were reflected physically, she would be so deformed—so twisted and broken—she wouldn’t be able to function like a normal person. And yet, we kept expecting her to!
I too was taken aback by the vision that came to my mind. I suddenly saw her physically twisted and deformed in a crumpled heap on the floor, unable to stand or do anything a normal person could do. Then I pictured her trying to hold me and nurture me from that position and failing miserably as I stood there, with my hands on my hips, demanding that she hug me like a normal person…
The thought came to me that it would be like a child who was handicapped physically and emotionally and then expecting them to behave like a normal child and rejecting their efforts to show love.
I was completely undone. She made so many efforts to do things for my sister and I but, because of her emotional condition, it didn’t look at all like a normal persons love… but she still tried… over and over again, to be the mom she so wanted to be!!
I was overwhelmed with emotion as I saw my mom for the first time, making monumental efforts to love me, while I stood there expecting her to exhibit “normal” behaviors and missing what she WAS doing.
So, as this vision was unfolding, I mentally got down on the floor and took her in my arms and finally received the love she had, in the way she could give it. It was the most heart wrenching and amazing feeling I have had in a long time.
I spent the morning sobbing as the tables turned on me and I saw my own pride and selfishness in desiring to be loved a certain way and missing the love she was giving me.
I was receiving the love and acceptance I had overlooked my whole life and it felt amazingly wonderful. Every time I think about it I get a fresh flow of tears falling down my cheeks because it is so wonderful and healing for me to finally receive my mom’s love after all these years.
Tom came up with a really good analogy as we sat and talked about this afterwards. He said, from my perspective, my mom was handing me foreign currency and I was looking at it like, what do you expect me to do with this?! I can’t use it or spend it here!
And I realized that am doing the same thing with him when he loves me in “his” love languages and not mine. I finally discovered the “exchange” rate and was able to convert it for my mom and was able to use it the way it was originally intended. Now I need to do the same for Tom. I need to see the way “he” loves me and be able to convert it into my own love currency and receive it. I suppose that also can be applied to my relationship with the Lord too!
This has been a very emotional week. God is showing me so many things! I feel like this was such a HUGE step for me in the right direction and I am looking forward to experiencing the continued emotional healing and freedom that will result from this. It has already made a difference in my relationship to Tom in how I am seeing and responding to him. I am not seeing or feeling things in the old way but am now discovering new thoughts and perspectives that I have missed all these years.
Thank you Jesus for that amazing revelation and healing moment. Thank you for helping me to finally receive what my mom was so desperately trying to give but was unable to in the “normal” ways. I am receiving my mothers love in the way she was able to give it and I am so blessed.
Lord, I know that was YOU because only You can make these sort of things happen. Now maybe I can see and feel YOU in new and wonderful ways too. THAT is my hearts desire… to KNOW you deeper and better every day of my life. In Jesus name, amen.
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