November 17, 2006 7:19 AM
On grandmotherhood, motherhood, and spiritual growth
You might want to grab a cup of coffee. This starts out kinda day-to-day but waxes philosophical at the end:
Here are my own boys and my grandkids enjoying a quick dinner last night - quick because there was so much to do. Tripp took Jonny, Jesse and Daniel to their rehearsal at Round Hill for Japanese Fairy Tales (more about that later).
The grandkids and Justin and I cleaned up and had a little down time. Then we all met back together and joined Maddy and Sophia at Loudoun Valley High at 7:00. The girls had had rehearsal for Les Miz and Sophia was getting inducted into National Honor Society.
Busy day! It started at nine when I drove over the mountain (that's what we call it here near the Blue Ridge Mountains) to pick up my grandkids. Kip and Sam had left at 4 in the morning to catch their flight for Guatemala, leaving big brother in charge.
It was pouring rain and I was feeling very emotional – on the verge of crying at the wonder of it all. That God had given me a second chance and that my life was so rich and full – that every day seems packed with miracles. I notice as some people get older they get more hard and ornery. I find myself growing more soft and tender as the protective layers I built in my childhood are being completely stripped away.
Sam’s house was warm and welcoming. I always feel blessed when I see little touches of me here and there in the way she has created an environment that respects and nurtures the children. The kids were eating breakfast and cleaning up the kitchen. Everything was packed and ready to go – including their little dog. We ran back and forth in the pouring rain packing the van.
Then back over the mountain and home to build a cozy fire. The kids had their lessons all planned, so they got to work while I had a phone conference with an editor to discuss future books. I corrected some of their work, but mostly they worked independently.
The day went quickly, followed by the evening activities. At the end, as we came in the door from the NHS ceremony, Samantha was on the phone. Her day had been emotion-packed and she was exhausted. Neither she nor Kip speak Spanish (she took French in high school, he took German – who would have thought back then how much we would need Spanish?). There was the long flight on a foreign jet, arriving in a sea of needy people, a mix-up on their hotel reservations (only one night instead of three and the hotel was booked – thank God they found another hotel to move to today), the orphanage scene with row upon row of bassinets and babies screaming because there aren’t enough people to hold them. They were able to spend a few hours with the baby, admiring her beautiful dark eyes and hair and feeding her. Then Sam said, she saw the birth mother through the window into the next room – she recognized her from the picture she’d been sent – and she wanted to go and meet her, but was told she couldn’t until today. A strange and awkward feeling.
My daughter was drained by the emotions of the day. How I wished I could just hug her!
It is hard sometimes to be tender – to be vulnerable and open yourself emotionally. There is the feeling of being swept away on a tide that may become uncontrollable. But God is in charge of that aspect of our lives too, and he gave us our emotions for a reason – to bring us closer to each other and closer to him.
As a child I went through many hurts – abandonment, divorce, foster home, sexual abuse – that caused me to put a wall around my heart. A counselor later explained to me that there is nothing wrong with this at all. When a child is in a bad place, it’s just a survival technique. But as we grow up, the mistake is to keep up the wall, assuming that everyone will hurt you.
The wonderful thing about living in Christ is that life becomes more than just what we are doing each day. It becomes what we are learning each day. It’s very exciting to me that even at 58 I am not finished. God still has plans for me, new areas of growth.
For the past year, he has been teaching me to keep a tender heart. I know because I have seen real changes. Remember I asked you to pray because one of my other daughters had stopped speaking to me? What I didn’t say was that this has happened before, when we lived in California and she stopped speaking to me for a year.
What is different now is that it was actually a year ago that she would have cut off our relationship this time. But because God has been increasing my capacity to love, I reacted differently. I would not walk away. I kept up the relationship on what for me is a very superficial level – never bringing up anything substantial for discussion, but visiting, smiling, bringing presents, trying to make the most of the limited role I was allowed. I overlooked slights like not being invited to baby showers, having my comments deleted at their blogs, and reading blog entries critical of me. It was actually easy, because God had changed my heart so that what was important was just giving, not receiving.
So when she broke the relationship this time – saying she needed time to work things out – I knew in my heart I had done everything I can.
Is it painful? Yes. Especially when I see how rich and rewarding relationships can be as a family grows healthier each day. My own grandparents were divorced or dead and so I never had any myself. I got to experience the richness of the relationship my mother-in-law had with my children. And now I am experiencing building rich relationships with my grandchildren myself. I have never been allowed to fully invest in the other five grandchildren and there has always been the threat hanging over my head that they can be withdrawn at any time. And because this daughter seems to hate the other, the children have been cut off from those relationships too.
Do I worry that we will never have relationship again? Yes, of course I do. It’s easy to make a monster of someone you’ve cut out of your life. I’m not allowed to visit or write or email. I was leaving loving phone messages, but my daughter found this “disturbing and manipulative.â€
So all I have now is prayer.
And this daughter has always seemed intent on believing the worst of me – sure that I am a complete phony who has fooled the rest of the world into believing I am something I am not. Believe me, there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t scrutinize myself to see if what she thinks is true. And I have made it a point of briefly sharing this difficult part of my life when I speak at MOPS for three reasons.
The first reason is that we should not put Christian leaders/writers/speakers on the pedestals we do. And Christian leaders/writers/speakers who are in this position must be very careful not to let it change who they are. I personally have found that having this additional responsibility is very humbling, for even as I’m charged to write about the ideals I try to practice in bringing up my kids, I am sharply reminded how far short I fall. Which is why I say you must always remember that we are talking about ideals and while it’s important to try to live up to them, it’s equally important to not judge ourselves or others harshly because of them.
The second reason is that as a woman who’s “gone over the mountain†of motherhood with six children who are now adults (and six still at home to keep me on my toes!), I am preparing the way for you on the path you are growing into. As young mothers we think it could never happen to us that a child could grow to despise us. Perhaps we need that over-confidence in order to get up each day and do the hard work we must do to keep a cheerful home. And perhaps there are mothers who make it through without ever having that experience. What we all have in common is that for every child we raise, we will have a different and unique relationship. Some will respect, admire, and love us dearly. Some may not. But that is not an indication of the quality of your motherhood. Your motherhood has always been and will always be between you and God. No report card, no performance review, no judgment by a child – who, after all, will always be younger and less wise than you – can change that.
The third reason is that there may be someone who hears me speak or reads my words who has been unable to see into her own mother’s heart. Perhaps you have been harder on your mother than you should be. Perhaps you are blaming her for not being perfect, for being a hypocrite, for whatever things my daughter is blaming me for – I can only guess as she is not one to seek reconciliation through open discussion – and you have allowed your feelings to interfere with the growth of your relationship or your children’s relationship with their grandmother. If so, I urge you to reconsider. There is always the possibility that the problem is not with your mother, who after all is a just a human being. Why wait 20 years to experience what you will surely experience – that your children don’t judge you as perfect either – before making peace with her?
Of course your children are bound to discover you’re not perfect. We can just hope and pray they love us anyway. And that when we look at their homes and families we see reflected there the things we thought were important.
Last night in the auditorium of Loudoun Valley High School, Tripp and I were bookends to a row of ten children under 14 – five of our kids and five grandchildren. As Sophia went up to receive her NHS award, I looked down the row at Tripp and silently said, “Good job!â€
That’s what it’s all about. No matter what happens down the line, remember it’s between you and God. All I want is at the end of this life and beginning of the next to stand before my heavenly father and hear, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.â€
But if you listen carefully, you can even hear it whispered now.
Posted in Family, Mothering | Permalink
Comments
Barbara,
Thanks for sharing your story about your daughter. I'm sure that there have been times that I have been harder on my own mother than necessary, so this is a great encouragement for me to continue loving despite of the flaws and most of the time the flaws are in me! I will pray for reconciliation to take place in your relationships with your daughter and grandchildren.
Posted by: Christy | November 17, 2006 12:58 PM
"I notice as some people get older they get more hard and ornery. I find myself growing more soft and tender..."
I've noticed that the very old tend to be extremely Godly or extremely not. As the twig is bent, I guess, so the tree grows.
Posted by: Marie | November 17, 2006 2:51 PM
Barbara,
Thank you for sharing this. I am 38 years old and have only recently realized what a rich Christian heritage I was afforded. My Dad was a very strong, passionate, Christian man. He passed away five years ago. I loved him dearly. I was always very hard on him in my heart, though. I put him on a pedestal, so when he inevitably failed I was very critical of him, often thinking he was a hypocrite or manipulative. Our relationship was never estranged, but I did not realize until recently how wrong I was. My Dad had a childhood riddled with abuse of all kinds. He had many scars that I couldn't begin to understand. I think of David when I think of my Dad. He was a man after God's own heart, but he was still a sinner.
It's all quite perplexing really. I wanted him to be perfect. He couldn't be perfect. Why did I think he could? My Dad never put me or my siblings down, he had a servant's heart, he was an encourager by nature, and he loved me unconditionally. These were all things he did not have as a part of his own childhood, yet he demonstrated those to his children. God gave him the capacity to be that kind of father. He was an unfinished work, though. I am very glad that I never told my Dad that at times I thought he was manipulative or a hypocrite. I'm older now and a little further up the mountain. As I travel up with five children in tow, I have a much wiser perspective. I pray that as I spur my children on to be more Christ-like they will realize that neither I nor they will be perfected this side of heaven.
Hopefully you can follow the rambling. I was blessed by your post.
Michelle
Posted by: Michelle | November 17, 2006 3:32 PM
Well, that made me burst into tears.
Thanks for the gentle nudge to a younger parent. Relationships with my parents are either nonexistent or contentious. Perhaps seeing myself on the parent end one day will help me extend God's grace right now.
Posted by: Meredith | November 17, 2006 5:24 PM
Thank you for sharing this. I hope the rift with your daughter will be healed soon.
Posted by: Purple_Kangaroo | November 18, 2006 9:09 PM
What we all have in common is that for every child we raise, we will have a different and unique relationship. Some will respect, admire, and love us dearly. Some may not. But that is not an indication of the quality of your motherhood. Your motherhood has always been and will always be between you and God. No report card, no performance review, no judgment by a child – who, after all, will always be younger and less wise than you – can change that.
Thank you for these words, Barbara. They are such a comfort to me. I have 2 grown and 3 still in process. It can be very daunting and humbling to be a mother in that stage. You see your failures being lived out, and you feel like you didn't do a good enough job at times. And what if you make the same mistakes because of your own lifelong character flaws? It's easy to only see what we did wrong and to overlook what we did right. God knows our hearts.
Posted by: Kim | November 19, 2006 8:13 AM
"The first reason is that we should not put Christian leaders/writers/speakers on the pedestals we do....it’s equally important to not judge ourselves or others harshly because of them [ideals]."
This was my favorite paragraph of the post! I have been reading Edith Schaeffer's
Common Sense Christianity
Praying for your relationship with your daughter. That eyes and ears and hearts would be open to reconciliation...however that may come.
Posted by: Kari at HealedWaters.com | November 20, 2006 12:08 PM
Thanks for such an open and honest post. I needed to hear it. I am sometimes guilty of holding my own mother responsible for things that she simply can't change. I am trying to accept it. I certainly love her anyway, I just struggle to show it.
Posted by: Faith | November 20, 2006 3:10 PM
Ooops - that title in the above comment should have been "Common Sense Christian Living." And I didn't mean to format it like that!
I've been thinking about this post all day... Saddest of all is to see the emptiness in my mother's heart, to know her rejection of me is really a rejection of God in me, and to know there is nothing *I* can do to fill the holes in her heart.
She would like me to do this or that or to be this or that...but even when I do or *am* she still is not pleased. Still, she pushes away. She hasn't any inkling that her emptiness does not stem from her dissatisfaction with her children (those of us who are "religious" (read: born again))...but only a symptom of her dissatisfaction with life.
I know that the Lord can do all things, and I pray regularly that her heart would be softened to the things of God and to Christ. I don't even concern myself with her heart being softened to me anymore. Partly because I have given up, partly because I know it just won't happen until the first is resolved.
I have found God to be gracious and kind in providing numerous spiritual mothers in recent months...blessing me ten times over for the parents I left when I chose Christ over Mom and Dad. I can't begin to imagine the reward in heaven if the reward in this life is *so* wonderful. It is a promise all of us who have chosen Christ, daily, despite objection and sometimes persecution from family, can cling to.
In Christ alone,
Kari
Posted by: Kari at HealedWaters.com | November 21, 2006 5:21 PM
