I spent years trying to understand my relationship with my parents. We had a very dysfunctional relationship. Every day, it seems like I find another connection to my father. I sometimes feel sad that we couldn’t connect more than we did when he was alive. However, at the same time, I know I shouldn’t have any regrets. He was just that type of person. I needed to appreciate him for what he was.
Then, I think about my mom. I want to believe that someday I might feel something different, but I don’t yet. Then, today I was looking for a music video on the internet and when I found what I was looking for, the lyrics I heard just seemed to hit home. My mom spent so much time and effort trying to control me and mold me into what she wanted me to be that she never saw who I really was. She loved me as much as she was capable of doing, but that’s like saying she loved me as much as she loved could love a paper doll image of me. Nothing I did was good enough for her. She would never believe that I loved her no matter what I said or did. And in the end, I just got tired of it all. I stopped feeling anything at all when it came to her.
When she died, I didn’t feel anything. The only time I cried was when I heard a song from my own childhood, and it brought back a memory from a long time ago. In that memory, I remembered singing along to the song with my mom and just having fun. I remember this idealized “childish” image of my mom that I held on to for a long time, but then when I matured, I lost that image. I believe that most people have an idealized image of their parents and when they get older that image changes into something else. That’s how it happened for me and my dad. However, with me and my mom, it was like one day she was there and the next day, I knew the image was shattered and I didn’t have a real mom anymore. It wasn’t like she stopped being there for me. I just finally understood that she never was there at all; I just didn’t realize it.
That sounds sad, but I think I understand God better now. In Christianity, people often act like you have to be saved and as soon as you do, then everything changes. Because of my experience with my mom, I understand that isn’t how it works. God is always there. Our choice to be “saved” or not, doesn’t change God. It doesn’t change His love for us. It doesn’t change how He sees us or His plan for us. The choices of a tiny human being don’t make a huge difference in the machinations of a huge universe that has existed for millennia. Yet surrendering to God does change that human being.
Nothing I did or said ever made a difference to my mom. I didn’t control her. I had no power over her. The decisions I made in my life wouldn’t make any difference to her at all. I didn’t and couldn’t change her. However, what I did with my knowledge of her could change my life. I could spend my life feeling defeated and controlled or I could become my own person and choose to give all the power in my life to God.
And that’s really where faith is important. It isn’t how I change the world, it’s how I decide to let the world change me. For all I know, life could be a computer program, it could be a dream, it could be a virtual reality game, or it could all just end meaningless when I die. However, what gives my life meaning right here and right now is what I choose to be important and what I believe is real. For me, everything else could fall away and be illusion, but the one thing that has power for me is God. It is the one thing I have faith in. For me, that is real. It gives everything else I do meaning, and that’s good enough for me.
I stopped feeling with my mom, but because of God, I want to feel everything. I want to be alive and real. I thank God for that every day.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
