Hope your mom saw the strengths you could not and nurtured them.
If she did not aggravate your weaknesses, you are doubly-blessed.
Sadly, there are many out there who are still crippled from their mother's ability to engender self-doubt, to paralyze with guilt, to eviscerate with shame.To this day many question their judgment because they can hear a mother's voice doing exactly the same thing. About everything.
I think those messages, all the moving targets, the withholding of approval and affirmation--"Quit crying! You're not hurt!" Well, I thought I was hurt, I mean I am bleeding--leave folk prone to all sorts of bad decisions, if only because they are unsure as to what constitutes a good decision.
Not to say mothers, or parents, are to blame for all bad decisions...not at all. Only that, unsure as we are as to what constitutes virtue, we can fall victim to all sorts of vice.
Hallmark cards do not give voice to those kinds of benedictions.
2 comments:
As a daughter, I thank God that in His goodness He's managed to take the "sins of the fathers" I've inherited and used them for good in my life and His kingdom.
As a mother, I pray He will do the same in the lives of my children, and give them the grace to see things the same way.
Isn't it good to know that as an adult, though it was a long time coming for me, we can re-attach to our family of origin? For me it was sweet release when I was finally able to say, "My mom, my dad, they loved me--maybe not always the way I needed them to, but they loved me the best they knew."
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