My mother was a mess. A 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).

 

 

 

 

 

For me, writing is like eating a big piece of chocolate pie. Okay, I lied. It’s like eating cow manure.

I sit at my computer, staring at a blank screen wondering where to start. And that’s really tough because most of the time I don’t even know what I want to write about. So I sit fidgeting at the computer, smear vaseline on my lips, blow my nose, clip my nails, paint my toenails, jump up and let the dogs out, trying to squeeze words from my tiny brain that’s as dry as a sponge. Finally, I plop back into my chair and a word or two trickles out and I begin typing before they evaporate and disappear. But, they’re senseless; utterly stupid.

Frustrated, I get up from my chair and holler, “Coffee time!” at my husband snoring so loud I tell him the neighbours are complaining. Like a drunk on a three-day binge, he roles over and mumbles, “What time is it.”

“It’s way past time you be getting up, that’s what time it is,” I snort.

We drink our coffee on the back porch watching the birds at the bird feeder and yell at the dogs for pushing out the screen when a squirrel gets too close. We talk about old people stuff, like how kids today are nothing like the kids were in our day. Instead of sitting around like zombies texting or playing video games, we played with normal things, like frogs and lizards and rode our bikes for miles getting sunshine and exercise. And kids are so rude and disrespectful these days.

After three cups of coffee and solving the world’s problems, my bladder is screaming. Besides, it’s too hot by now sitting on the back porch. Between the heat and humidity, I feel like crawling inside the refrigerator, which is what the house feels like compared to outside. But that’s early summer North Carolina weather for ya.

I pour another cup of coffee, hubby gets on his computer checking his mail and visiting friends on Facebook, and I drag my butt back to my lonely computer chair and take up where I left off a few hours ago.

Finally, a story pops into my head. Waite. I don’t want to write about that! Besides, it’s way too personal. And I don’t like spilling my guts all over the place; too much like self-sabotage.

And if not for my family and friends encouragement, I’d either wear a mask when I write or not write at all.

And speaking of masks, I wore many of them growing up, trying to be what other people wanted me to be; in school, at home, in church. Like a chameleon, I’d change my thoughts and ideas to blend in with people’s likes and dislikes, pretending that I was calm and collect when my insides were blowing up. No one liked the real me, and neither did I. Then I wondered why I felt so anxious all the time. Why I was so confused, why I felt like a tattered rag doll tossed at the bottom of a garbage bin.

Then I went through a series of agonizing events that gave me glimpses of the battered child within trying desperately to get out; clawing her way through the rubble of lies and deceit and anger and rage, being what other people wanted her to be.

Like an onion, I began peeling off the masks, one protective mask at a time; feeling naked, vulnerable and shaking with fear inside my skin. Some people didn’t like that I arose from the dead. I started speaking out, expressing my hurt and anger at being emotionally bullied just to make others happy. And I admit, after years and years of holding back the furries of Hell, I turn into Adolph Hitler when the words start gushing out.

So, yes. Writing for me is like eating cow manure. I have to pry the words out of my brain, weigh them on the scales of truth and justice, swim against the tide of my anxieties, and agonize over whether or not to post what I spent hours, sometimes days writing. But the yearning deep inside my soul to write what I feel won’t allow me to write any other way.