Lavender & Lace

I hate this day.

I have hated this day my whole life.

For as long as I can remember this day was always a day of conflicting, painful emotions. That really only exemplified one truth,

My mom is gone.

Even before I knew she was dead. Even back when she was probably still alive. Back when she rested in the belief that her child was somewhere else, safe, with another mom.

Emotions are conflicting.

I’ve tried to find words to communicate what it feels like, hundreds of times in my past. And the best I’ve articulated is this:

The person I love most in the entire world is the person whose voice I don’t know. Who’s smell I don’t remember. And whose laugh I won’t even recognize.

I have grieved for this person my entire life.

And maybe that’s why I’m someone who finds it comfortable to have faith in a God I cannot see, touch, or hear. Maybe that’s why I can hear his voice when he speaks to me…because I’ve spent so many nights sitting alone in the darkness pleading with my memory to let me hear hers.

But never could.

When I was in Jr High I was struggling with finding out my moms identity and I remember having this conversation with God where I asked about my dad and he told me;

Your mom is your heart. So I will reveal her to you. But I won’t reveal your father. I am your father.

And that just always made sense to me.

I didn’t “find” my mom until many years later when I spent the better part of a year going through the grueling process of having my records unsealed and the court documents transferred to me.

That was the first time I realized that my mom had given me her middle name.

It was also the day I found her grave.

Words cannot express certain emotions. They just can’t.

But then a couple years ago I came across a blog post that was written by someone who has had nothing but pure hatred for me where she had written about my mother and my family. I never reacted to it and I’ve never spoken publicly about it because I intentionally didn’t want to validate the pain she caused me and my family. But it astounded me, the amount of hatred someone had to hold within themselves to wound another by the thing that they themselves had been wounded by. The amount of slander and intentional cold cruelty was something I cannot adequately express or recreate. But I’ve held onto this hurt, silently, for a very long time, thinking that it would one day be my responsibility to defend my family.

But it was actually one of the first things Jesus asked me to surrender to him.

“Vengeance is mine, says the Lord” (Romans 12:19) 

I remember him speaking to me and telling me that what I felt was righteous anger, but that how I wished for justice to be done would not be done righteously. And that the only true power I had was in surrendering it.

But even more than that, he began to reveal to me the depths of brokenness that existed within this individual that gave them this sense of false power over me. That they were using me as a punching bag to deal with the hurt and pain they felt in their own life.

I get how that feels.

I relate to that so much.

Because I have also been there.

And it’s so easy, on a day like today, to take all those years of pain and suffering that I hold close in memory and to want to throw it away from myself. Allow it to fall on someone else. Do whatever it takes for a moment of relief from the grief I am forced to carry.

That’s what it feels like to be human.

But today, I want more. I want better.

Mom my is gone. That is the truth. But it is also the truth that I will see her again one day. That death doesn’t have the last say. One day, I will sit beside her and the Lord and talk about all the time that was missed out on. I will see her smile and hear her laugh. She won’t be angry or hurting. She won’t want alcohol. She won’t want to run away. There will just be perfect, everlasting, peace.

And that is the thing I will hold onto today.

I will bow my head a pray for the hearts still broken and bleeding.

I won’t seek justice upon you, because I now know that your suffering is yours to carry.

Jesus heard my cry and he saw my tears and that is all the justice I need. He will meet with you and deal with you, I don’t have to.

But know that while you are reading this, that I forgive you for what you did.

I hope that you find Him and I hope He heals you too.

Because we both lost our mothers and we are both carrying pain today. We don’t need to add anything more to that, my friend.

Today we are more alike than we are different.

And I am sorry for that.