More revelations! I am on a quest to think of and remember my mom and my childhood through different eyes. I am looking for ways that my mom loved me that I missed as a child and didn’t receive from her. One day last week as I was driving I thought of all the people she had caring for us while she worked and went to school. After a while, these couples would bond with us and we would bond with them and they would want to adopt us but then mom would remove us from that place and find another couple for us to stay with. I would get angry because we were moved so often and never really felt settled and then would bond with people only to be whisked away to another place. Well, as I was thinking about this, I thought, maybe that was one way in which mom loved us. It would be SO much easier as a single parent to let us go and let others take responsibility for us but she didn’t want to give up and give us away! She wanted to keep us and do all she could to be the best mom she could be at that time, working and going to school to care for us. Wow. I had not thought about it like that before. Her way of loving us was to keep custody of us and not give us away! That was a new thought for me.
Tom and I were talking Friday morning and he asked me if I had come up with ways mom loved me so I shared that thought with him. Then he said, you know, considering how emotionally crippled she was… then the Lord gave him a thought and a visual that took his breath away, and then he continued; If your mom’s “emotional” crippledness was revealed in the “physical” she would be so physically deformed she would not be able to function normally, yet we kept expecting her to! What caught his breath was that vision of her emotional condition translated in the physical… what she would look like. I also was taken aback by the vision that came to my mind. I 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 expecting her to hug me as a normal person… The thought came to me that it would be like a child who was handicapped physically and emotionally and 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. 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. So, I mentally got down on the floor and held her and 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 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 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 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 those sort of things happen. Now maybe I can see and feel YOU in new and wonderful ways too. Lord, that is my hearts desire… to KNOW you deeper and better every day of my life. In Jesus name, amen.
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