Life Without Mother

Dear Mom,

I’d like to talk to you about her. She’s great. She loves Jesus. She loves Dad. She loves her kids (including us, your kids). She loves her grandkids. She loves to serve others. She loves to teach. She loves to bake and cook for the sake of putting smiles on the faces of the eaters. She loves to sew and craft clothing. She loves to work with her hands. She loves to reach out to others, especially all of the “extras” (as you’d affectionately call them) who Mary Faith and Selena know through school.

You knew many of these things. You knew her and she knew you. This is why I’ve always known that of all people she would fit into our family.

It’s just been like two puzzles coming together to create a new picture. Together they look beautiful and have the potential to fit. It has just taken much shaving of the little pieces to fit together snuggly.

The past three years it has been difficult to look past hurt and comparisons. I’m learning not to see her love for creatively cooking and baking from scratch as “outdoing” your more simple cooking for us picky eaters. You just focused on different ways of serving others. I’m learning that the changes in our family to draw close to God is not because you didn’t encourage it or because she encourages it more, but because we had to learn and be pushed to do it ourselves in a new way because of how God was drawing us to Him in the wake of your absence. I’m learning that I can talk to Dad. I can trust him with my heart again, and when he tells her about our conversations, that just means I have one more prayer warrior on my side. It doesn’t mean that I have one more critic waiting for the opportunity to tell me how I could do better.

I’m learning to be honest. Be kind. Don’t overthink. Be patient. Have a positive attitude. Be the things I want to see in others. Resting in the confidence of my identity being Christ. And she is my sister-in-Christ, just as Dad is my brother-in-Christ as much as he is my father.

There is a part of me that still longs for you, for my mother. It also longs for a mother-figure to ease the pain of loneliness by knowing that I’ve got that more-wizened woman on the other end of the phone. These four years in college, I’ve been subconsciously (and even sometimes consciously) seeking this person out. However, this role has been filled inconsistently by different wonderful women in different seasons of my college career. Part of this is my own hesitancy to reach out and be vulnerable. Part of it is the busyness of many of the women in my life with their own families. Each time there has been a shifting of seasons, my heart (or maybe the Spirit) has whispered her name.

Freshman, sophomore, and even part of junior year, I said an adamant, “No, I’m not ready for that!” Each successive year, the second part, “I’m not saying it won’t happen in the future — maybe it will,” became more and more thoughtfully spoken. My heart was healing. Slowly, but surely. I didn’t want to be angry. I’m not angry.

A final window (no more brick walls or fortified barricades) separates me from readily opening my heart to intentionally developing that relationship: in my heart she remains the constant reminder of your absence.

And I mean this with no anger — just the sorrow of grief — but it still aches when I see the love between Dad and her. Kisses, touches, soft words, gazes. After eighteen years (take away one or two for baby memory) of seeing the same things between you and Dad, it’s so difficult to see it with a different woman. It is not a judgement of sin or any such thing as that in my heart and mind, but simply the hardship of being reminded so constantly of your absence that makes those loving gestures possible. I think it will take a bit longer — more time if not just more exposure — to re-wire my heart and mind to see and not associate with the pain of loss.

Our Heavenly Father knows the pain of loss. How does He look at us with such love that He would lose His Son for the sake of having relationships with each of us who brought about that loss, and yet even after our sin and rebellion He continues to associate us with His Son and not our sin?

Oh, Father, help me associate their love with Your love and not my loss! Until that happens, give me peace and grace and patience. Guide me to that lens of love through which You so wonderfully see us!

I’m making it, Mom. On this road of healing. “Of” not “to”. The healing is in the process. Holiness is the final destination. You’re already there. I’m a lifetime away. But, “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3). That is a promise for this life as well. For He is God over this life as much as the next.

He will bring me to the point of not only healing in my heart but a completely healed relationship with her. And perhaps it will be one of the mother-daughter variety. I think you’d like that. In the meantime, I’ll keep talking to Dad, and not hide anymore.

I love you, and will miss you always.

Your daughter,
Hannah