While scooting my chair closer to the table, my finger received a painful, pinch. Some people are so timid they’d rather drop dead than mention a tiny thing like that. I guess that’s why the waitress was speechless when I shoved my bleeding finger under her nose and complaining, “This chair bit me!”

It’s just the principle of the thing. Eating out should be a safe and pleasant experience, especially when it costs half your monthly retirement check. Besides, what if a child sits in this same wobbly chair? Could take a big chunk out of his finger making him scream bloody murder and his parents dashing to his side yelling law-suit!

After finding her voice, the waitress stuttered, “I’m so sorry! I will have the manager come and talk to you.”

Waiting for our meal to arrive, hubby and I sat talking and laughing with his aunt and uncle sitting across from us. It was Good Friday and the restaurant was packed and noisy. I don’t like noisy. Whatever happened to quiet restaurants playing classical music and everyone talking in whispers? Why do people insist on having TVs and cell phones everywhere they go? Why can’t they just be happy with real live flesh and bones sitting in front of them? Or next to them. Or just in the same room with them. And why don’t restaurants fix their wobbly chairs?

Finally, our meal arrived. Lasagna, my favorite food ever. I can’t help it. I love anything with tomatoes in it. As a kid, I wouldn’t eat till I drenched everything on my plate with ketchup. Drove my dad nuts!

Finishing our delicious meal, a tall, pleasant young man stood beside our table beaming down at us. The manager, just as the waitress promised. Sitting there with a smile as big Texas plastered on my face, I thought, wow! I never had a manager that looked like that.

Okay, I’m old, but I’m not dead.

Offering his deepest apologies and medical help, he told me that everyone’s checks were on him. Even asked me if I wanted his number if my finger got infected.

I wasn’t expecting that! It wasn’t like I’d cut off my hand. Feeling greatly humbled, I thanked and assured him my finger was fine. It didn’t need stitches or a bucket to catch the blood in. Just a tiny band-aid would do.

Tipping the waitress, we left the restaurant feeling happy about the service we received, reminding me that there are still good people in our seemingly selfish world. People who respect others and managers that care that their customers keep coming back.

As we always do when we’re together, we shopped around, laughing and cutting up like four, rambunctious school kids then stopped at Mayberry’s for ice cream. They have wobbly chairs, too. I couldn’t help wondering if they’d give us free ice cream if one of them bites me.  Probably not. It’s like squeezing blood from a turnip for hubby to get a military discount. Besides, I don’t want to find out that bad.

My mother was a mess. A real neurotic, paranoid, yelling and screaming broken mess, striking out at me as if her abusive childhood was my fault. My fault that her mother dumped her in an orphanage. My fault that she had a foster-mother from Hell. My fault that my dad didn’t work, that they were behind in the bills and my youngest brother was getting into trouble every time he blinked.

And I believed it.

I should have been there and punched that wicked foster-mother in the face. I should have been there when her sadistic son molested her in the barn.  I should have beat him up, hung him from the highest tree stark naked in the blazing sun and let the buzzards finish him off.

That’s what I should have done.

And I felt smugly justified in my feelings seeing how broken my mother was. How the fury inside her erupted time and again. How none of us knew how to help her or cope with the hopelessness and devastation her brokenness caused.

I don’t know why I felt so responsible for my mother’s tragic childhood. I don’t know why I thought I had the power to make her all better. Maybe I thought if she could just one time see and feel my love it would be enough.

It wasn’t.  All the love, wealth and happiness in the world wouldn’t have been enough.

But, I never stopped trying to be her “enough”. Trying and failing again and again till I had nothing left to give but a heart boiling with rage.

Carelessly, she used my tender, sensitive emotions to control me; to feel a sense of power she never felt growing up. Oh, how she loved un-zipping her soul revealing the wounded inner child, whimpering how she was beaten till she bled. How she walked a mile to school in snow up to her elbows. How she’d find rocks in her lunch bag instead of food. How her foster-mother hung her pee-stained sheets out her bedroom window for every passerby to see. If I resisted her mad ploy for control, She’d hammer me to the ground with her lengthy crypt-like silence till I finally caved in.

My mother had a china-doll-Incredible Hulk syndrome. Delicate and fragile one minute and a raging, roaring monster the next. My bedroom became my haven, but not for my poor Barbie dolls that were slammed repeatedly on the bed by a raging lunatic. Sometimes I’d even chop off their long, beautiful hair.

I admit I was a hellcat of uncontrollable fury against my mother at times, especially when I entered my teens and began pulling tighter on the reigns. I was a good kid; a Christian kid. I took to heart the morals she pounded into my head. I didn’t chase after boys, or lie, cheat or steal. I hung around wholesome kids and always checked in to let her know where I was. I earned my freedom and trust, didn’t I?

Nope! Nope! Nope!

Finally, the battle of the wills turned into a full-blown war neither of us would ever win.  And the very one who tried her darndest to save her is now drowning in a cesspool of grief, crying for help. But help never came.

No human hand reached out and touched me. No human arms held me tightly as I cried. No human voice whispered in the darkness everything will be okay.

But God did.

For years I ran from Him, though, blaming Him for everything that went wrong. My life was one big question mark of why’s. Why did you let it happen? Why didn’t you rescue my mother? Why didn’t you rescue me? Why? Why? Why?

He didn’t answer all my why’s, but He understood all my pain. He understood my raging fury. He cared that I was a shattered mess. And to prove it, He opened my eyes and I saw His beaming face. He touched my wild, rebellious heart. He held me in His arms like my father never did. He whispered to me in the darkness, “I’ve got this. I’ve got you. I’ll never let you go.”

It’s been a long bumpy ride. At times, it was like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute. But, although we never had a perfect relationship, after six years of no contact, we finally had a few civil years before she passed away.

There’s still that empty longing that only a mother can fill. My heart still cries for her. And I can’t help but wonder what a peaceful, loving home life would have felt like. Then, I look at my son and his happy, growing family and I know.

And I feel deeply blessed. Deeply rewarded when I did nothing to deserve it. And I can’t thank God enough for all that He has done for me even when I thought He didn’t care. I see now that through the darkest dungeon of despair, He was there, giving me strength, nudging me forward, teaching me, encouraging me, sending people to love me, picking up the pieces of my life as if they were priceless jewels. He never once left my side. Not even for a second.

I will never leave you nor forsake you (Joshua 1:5).