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Journeys To Mother Love

~ Encouragement and healing in mother/child relationships

Journeys To Mother Love

Category Archives: forgiving mom

Thankful for Forgiveness and Healing

17 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by Catherine Lawton in confessing our need, forgiving mom, the healing journey

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Forgiveness

Mtns-Aspen

Today I want to say how thankful I am for the grace of forgiveness. Forgiveness flows out of God’s heart of love. Undeserved but needed, it flows freely to me. It then lodges in my heart and changes me, overflowing to others.

Like a river of unconditional love, forgiveness washes into rocky spaces in relationships, cleansing away debris of bitterness, bringing newness and life.

Forgiveness is often a key to healing in relationships.

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THE GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT

26 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by arcecil in challenges of motherhood, childhood memories, emotional needs, expectations, forgiving mom, forgiving yourself, generational patterns, God's healing love, Jesus on the cross, letting go of anger, rejecting lies, the healing journey

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authentic relationship, Forgiveness, Healing love, life stages, mother and daughter

flowers, mountain sillouette, and sunset

flowers, mountain silhouette, and sunset

The four of us sat in the dining room of the nursing home. Two of us had cars in the parking lot; we were free to leave any time. The other two occupied wheelchairs because their legs would not support the weight of their bodies and their minds would not support a plan as simple as how to exit the building.

I was one of the ones who would be leaving. Usually I am the only non-resident who is sitting at my mother’s table in the dining hall, but this day the daughter of another lady had come to visit. The two of us carried on a conversation between the bits and pieces of attention that we gave our mothers, those bits and pieces being all our mothers could receive.

Then, out of the blue, the other daughter made a statement. “This one,” she said, as she gestured with a sideways nod toward her mother. (“This one”! Had she just called her mother “this one”? I thought.) “Kept a perfect house,” the other daughter continued. “Beds had to be made every morning. Twice a year we had to clean everything from the ceilings to the floors.”

I looked at the woman’s mother. She is younger than my mother by 15-20 years, but oxygen tubes trailed from her nostrils. My mother, who is now 99 years old, was going strong 15-20 years ago. The lady with the oxygen tubes was oblivious to her daughter’s comment. My mind scanned its reservoir of information, searching for an appropriate response to the other daughter’s comment. (My knee-jerk reaction was, I wish my childhood home had been tidier; but I did not tell her that. My next thought was, I wonder if my children think I cared too much about the cleanliness and order? But, of course, I didn’t air that question either.) The moment passed for lack of feedback, and the conversation moved in another direction.

Soon the visit ended. It was time for my mother’s nap. I exited the building to my car in the parking lot. In the car on the way back to accomplish the rest of my list of errands, my thoughts were drawn back to the table in the dining hall. Is there anybody who wishes his or her childhood was different, and therefore, better?

It is impossible to make a perfect home, to be a perfect mother, or to be a perfect child. But that’s what our minds seem to be set on: Perfect. We really think we can accomplish perfect, or we can go through life “bent out of shape” because our childhood home was not the version of perfect we were longing to have. I know there are varying degrees of imperfection, and some people have huge hurdles to overcome.

However, we have a heavenly Father who covers us in grace. After Adam and Eve sinned, God covered them with the skins of animals. Those animals were the first creatures to know death. That act of love was a foreshadowing of the supreme act of covering with grace by the death of God’s Son, Jesus, on a cross.

God’s grace is the only way we can break the cycle of hurt—anger—hurt—anger—hurt. We might not be able to control very much in our lives, or accomplish a long list of achievements. But, we can accomplish—I believe—the greatest achievement. We can be the generation in our family that chooses to break those negative cycles for our family. We do this by forgiving and “covering each other with grace.”

~A.R. (Alice) Cecil

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Leaving a Legacy of Healing

25 Saturday Jan 2014

Posted by ardisanelson in challenges of motherhood, emotional needs, forgiving mom, generational patterns, God's healing love, leaving a legacy, Parenting, the healing journey

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Courage to be honest, Emotional and spiritual healing, Finding our identity, Forgiveness, Healing love, life and death, Modeling the faith, Parenting

Evening Light on the Grasses

Lately I’ve been struck with reminders of the importance of legacy and purpose in our lives—most recently while attending a memorial service for someone I knew at church who died suddenly before Christmas. She was a vibrant part of our church community, serving in many capacities, but most notably as Lady Jellybean, a beloved clown in the children’s ministry. Her passing was a great loss to all who knew her.

This got me to thinking more about the legacy that I’m leaving. What will people say about me after I’m gone? How will my family remember me? I’m the first to admit that I don’t have it all together, that I am at times overwhelmed by all the irons I have in the fire, and even that I’ve fallen short of my kids’ or my husband’s expectations.

I came into marriage over thirty years ago carrying a lot of baggage from a turbulent and empty childhood. I didn’t have the kind of parents who modeled a godly marriage or who poured into my siblings and me in ways that bonded us on an emotional level. Quite the contrary, we didn’t know anything about emotional bonding.

It wasn’t until much later in life, when I re-dedicated my life to Christ, and started attending Bible studies, spiritual growth classes, and Celebrate Recovery, that I realized the damage I was causing in my own family and in myself.

As I started to understand things about myself, learned what I hadn’t received emotionally (or have modeled to me), I began to make changes in my parenting and my relationship with my husband—though both are still far from perfect. The point is, we can make changes in our lives that will affect the legacy we leave behind.

Case in point: although my mother was mentally ill all her life, I realized in her passing three years ago that she didn’t leave me a legacy of mental illness as I had feared she would. She left me a great legacy of faith by modeling that to me. I didn’t appreciate it when I was young, but see it now as a vibrant part of who I am.

Before my father passed away the following year, there was a great deal of healing between us as well. Those last few months gave both of us peace in his passing. Those are the memories that stand out to me now as I think of what he gave me. I attribute that to God’s work in me and my ability to forgive both of my parents early on in my recovery and healing process.

I am breaking the generational curse of dysfunction by modeling biblical principles with my sons. I wish I had known then—when my kids were young—what I know now. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if they enter into the therapeutic process because of things I said or did out of my parenting and biblical ignorance.

My hope in all of this is that, when I’m dead and gone, my sons will remember that I had a heart for Jesus and that He became the foundation of my life. And when they decide to enter into the healing process, I hope and pray that they will embrace it with grace for themselves and their imperfect parents, along with embracing their Abba Father, who is the Healer of all wounds.

“Lord my God, I called to you for help, and you healed me.” Psalm 30:2, NIV

~ Ardis A. Nelson

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Relationships Can Be Complicated

07 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by Catherine Lawton in challenges of motherhood, expectations, forgiving mom, forgiving yourself, generational patterns, generations coming together, Learning to appreciate Mom, the healing journey

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authentic relationship, Finding our identity, Israel, Messianic Judaism, Mother, mother and daughter, relationships, Yeshua

Catherine and her mother

That’s me and Mother (a few years ago!)

In her review on Amazon.com of Journeys to Mother Love, Judy Pex* wrote, “I would recommend this book to any woman because even if we don’t all have daughters, we do all have mothers, and from my personal experience as well as women I speak with, those relationships can often be complicated.”

When it comes to complicated relationships, Judy knows of what she speaks. Growing up Jewish in America, living most of her adult life as a Messianic believer in Israel, raising her children to believe in Yeshua (Jesus) while they attended Israeli schools and then served in the Israeli army, hosting travelers from all over the world in the hostel she and her husband, John, run. Worshiping with and caring for people from many different cultural and language backgrounds. Working with refugees. All kinds of opportunities for complicated relationships (which she navigates with grace)!

Especially fraught with opportunities for complications is the mother/child relationship, and most especially the mother/daughter relationship. Why is that?

I’m going to list some thoughts off the top of my head about what might cause those complications:

1. Perhaps mothers try to re-live their lives through their daughters. And perhaps daughters see themselves or their potential selves in their mothers, and they may or may not like what they see.

2. Unrealistic expectations.

3. Emotional dependence.

4. The need to (and not always managing to) really listen and view your daughter – or mother – as a unique individual in her own right.

I’m sure there are many more contributing factors. Maybe our readers can add their thoughts about why this mother/daughter relationship can – and often does – become so complicated.

~ Catherine Lawton

*Judy (Judith Galblum Pex) is the author of Walk the Land: A Journey on Foot through Israel and A People Tall and Smooth: Stories of Escape from Sudan to Israel.

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Role-Reversal and Emotional Baggage

21 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by Catherine Lawton in confessing our need, emotional needs, feeling inadequate, forgiving mom, frustration to freedom, God's healing love, letting go of anger, mother wounds, the healing journey

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authentic relationship, Courage to be honest, Emotional and spiritual healing, Forgiveness, life stages, mother and daughter, relationships, Role reversal, unresolved hurt

Loritta Slayton

Loritta, author of the story “White Knuckles”

Loritta Slayton tells another story of mother-daughter role reversal.

“Little by little,” Loritta says, “more of those decisions that limited Mom’s independence were required…. Quite independent her entire life, this change was hard for her. I found it challenging to lead in the face of her resistance and frustration. I hated the friction it caused.”

Loritta’s upbringing wasn’t characterized by warm or demonstrative affection and trust. White-knuckled anger took hold of Loritta as the responsibility for her aging mother (and then her mother-in-law as well!) fell to her. Loritta says, “Mom had ways of bringing out my lack of patience…. I had emotional baggage to deal with and I didn’t know how.”

Loritta’s story, “White Knuckles,” is the last story in the book, Journeys to Mother Love, for a reason. She has a strong testimony of relational healing that hinged on forgiveness toward her mother and obedience to the Lord. The conclusion to her story makes a fitting conclusion to the entire book:

“And so I hope that you, the reader, will be encouraged to give God permission to loosen your fingers from any ‘white-knuckled’ grip. May you be encouraged to say, ‘yes.’ May you experience the joy of finding freedom in any relationship where you’ve let your emotions rule over your heart and life. … Don’t wait. Give God permission now and start your journey to freedom and love.”

Thank you, Loritta, for your example to us of honesty and courage and faith.

~Catherine Lawton

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Is Mother’s Day Painful for You?

08 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by ardisanelson in encouraging each other, feeling inadequate, forgiving mom, forgiving yourself, God as our parent, the healing journey

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

experiencing Christ, Finding our identity, Forgiveness, future hope, God's promises, healing of memories, Mother's Day, unresolved hurt

flowers

How many of us, if we were really honest, would admit that we don’t look forward to Mother’s Day? We dread this day devoted to celebrating mothers. It conjures up feelings of inadequacies in our own parenting or maybe how we didn’t live up to the expectations our parents had for us. Maybe it even reminds us of the shame or condemnation we felt at the hands of our parents—especially our mothers.

Mother’s Day isn’t always about bouquets of flowers or a box of chocolates for mom. Sometimes it is filled with bitter memories of a childhood loss due to abusive parents, a longing for the birth mother we never knew, or regrets from things we said or did that can’t be taken back. Maybe your mother has died and you miss her presence in your life.

Those kinds of painful memories can also leave us questioning God or turning our back on him. Ultimately, I think, Mother’s Day can leave us yearning for something more.

What is that something more? It is the filling of the hole in our heart left by unforgiveness and broken dreams. How do we fill it? Maybe we turn to alcohol, drugs or sexual fantasizing; or maybe it is to acceptable forms of addictions like busyness and people pleasing—whatever it takes to make the ache go away. Haven’t we all done it or experienced it to some degree?

To all of you daughters and mothers who are in a painful place this Mother’s Day, I empathize with you; for I used to be there too. Don’t give up hope. “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11, NIV).

We can choose how we want to react to all of these circumstances. We can choose to walk in the light and hope of Christ, or we can choose to walk in the doom and gloom of the past. The past doesn’t need to define us. We have a choice.

As believers, we belong to the family of God, the body of Christ. If we don’t have a mother who bonded with us or nurtured us in loving ways, we can still get that kind of nurturing from our spiritual family and friends. Our family of birth does not have to define us. It is Christ and the family of God that define our identity.

Every day can be a day to celebrate mothers, if we view it from God’s perspective. Choose joy.

Dear brothers and sisters, I close my letter with these last words: Be joyful. Grow to maturity. Encourage each other. Live in harmony and peace. Then the God of love and peace will be with you (2 Corinthians 13:11, NLT).

~ Ardis A. Nelson

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Exaggerated Memories

13 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by Catherine Lawton in emotional needs, forgiving mom, Learning to appreciate Mom, losing mom too soon, the healing journey

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authentic relationship, Courage to be honest, Grief Loss and Bereavement

Lilies

In The Secret Life of Bees, the girl Lily deals with feelings of guilt, anger, and forsakenness after her mother’s death. At the end of the story she says:

“I keep my mother’s things on a special shelf in my room…. The feeling that they are holy objects is already starting to wear off…. In the photograph by my bed my mother is perpetually smiling on me. I guess I have forgiven us both, although sometimes in the night my dreams will take me back to the sadness, and I have to wake up and forgive us again.” (from The Secret Life of Bees, p. 301)

After a loved one dies we tend to idealize that person. In our minds we exaggerate their positive qualities and minimize—maybe for a while we even forget—their negative qualities. I knew a mother whose young son died in a Boy Scout hiking accident. Even after ten years she hadn’t moved anything in his bedroom. And no one else was allowed in there. That space, his things, and those memories were sacrosanct.

At the beginning of The Secret Life of Bees Lily treats the few things she has left that belonged to her mother as holy objects, buried secretly in a treasure box. By the end of the book Lily keeps these objects on a shelf like other possessions, and she is even beginning to let her friends touch them.

In the book, Motherless Daughters, author Hope Edelman says, “Like anger, idealization is a normal and useful early response to loss. Focusing on a mother’s good traits reaffirms the importance of her presence, and processing the happy side of a relationship is a gentle way to activate mourning. But every human relationship is affected by ambivalence, every mother an amalgam of the good and the bad” (p. 19). Ms. Edelman explains that if we are to mourn our mothers fully, we need to look back and “acknowledge the flip sides of perfection and love.” Otherwise we will be remembering our mothers as only half of what they were, and even ending up mourning a caricature, not the person who was your mother.

My mother died young, before I had matured in my understanding of her and ability to relate to her. I was stuck in my needy grief as long as I memorialized her in my mind as perfect, almost hallowed. Coming to remember, love, and appreciate my mother as a multi-faceted, even flawed woman (albeit one who loved a perfectly loving and holy God) has helped me move through the grief to a place where I can live and love much more freely.

~ Catherine Lawton

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“I Forgive You”

07 Thursday Mar 2013

Posted by Catherine Lawton in childhood memories, confessing our need, forgiving mom, God's healing love, letting go of anger, the healing journey

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

authentic relationship, Courage to be honest, Forgiveness, Jesus, Lent, relationships, unresolved hurt

"Forgiveness 3" by Carlos Latuff.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In every close relationship we can get our feelings hurt. At those times—when we hurt each other in big and small ways—two little words make a huge difference: “I’m sorry.” Have you said “I’m sorry” recently to your best friend? to your spouse? to your child? to your parent?

Then a sweet, healing balm is applied to the wound when three simple but powerful words are spoken back: “I forgive you.”

Nine Women Tell their Stories of Forgiveness & Healing … That’s the subtitle of our book, and for good reason. Healing and forgiveness go together. In fact, I can confidently say that relational healing won’t happen without forgiveness.

Forgiveness is the turning point in all the stories in Journeys to Mother Love.

During this season of Lent, I am going to meditate on the forgiveness provided for me by Jesus on the cross. He forgave freely, unconditionally, forever. Jesus was mocked, misunderstood, abused, rejected. Yet he said, “Father, forgive them.”

He was despised and rejected … a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering…. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows … and by his wounds we are healed (Isaiah 53: 3-6)

 
Stained glass at St John the Baptist's Anglica...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Can we not bring our offenses, hurts, and rejections to Jesus?

Because Jesus forgives, we must. Because he did, we can.

Forgive. Then live in a heart attitude of forgiveness. Slights, rejections, offenses will come—sometimes unexpectedly, catching us off-guard. I’m asking the Lord to help me recognize those feelings when they come, then help me give the offense and the feelings to Jesus immediately. He knows my thoughts and feelings already. I can simply let it go. In faith. With love. Because there are much bigger things at stake than my hurt feelings. Because it’s so much more important how the Lord sees me than how others see me. Because he gave his life and shed his precious blood so that forgiveness could happen. Because fellowship, relationship, wholeness are so important to the Lord and so wonderful to experience.

I realize some wounds are so deep we hardly know how to face them, how to deal with them, or even exactly what or who we need to forgive. Perhaps the other person is not saying “I’m sorry.” But our unforgiving spirit is causing us pain and keeping us from a life of joyful wholeness.

As a child I heard my preacher father give the sermon illustration of a festering boil, full of pus and painful to touch. Such a sore place causes misery and anguish until you are willing to have it lanced open and drained of the poisonous, pressuring pus. Or what about a person who had a broken arm that wasn’t set properly and grew together wrong, awkward and painful? It must be re-broken and set properly so it can knit together in harmony and heal, so the arm will move freely without pain.

I don’t want to let poisonous reactions, angry pressure, out-of-kilter attitudes, or pus-like resentment fester in my soul and cause anguish in my relationships.

Lord, give me the grace to say and mean, “I forgive you.”

~Catherine Lawton

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Mother Wounds

07 Wednesday Nov 2012

Posted by ardisanelson in confessing our need, emotional needs, encouraging each other, forgiving mom, generational patterns, mother wounds, the healing journey

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Emotional and spiritual healing, Forgiving yourself, Mom Factor, Mothering, Parenting

cropped-blog-header-web1.jpg

My mother wounds ran deep—too deep to ever look at until God nudged me back to my elderly mother’s side after her debilitating stroke. Before that first trip back home in November 2009, I had written my mother off. Her schizophrenia made her unavailable to me emotionally, although I didn’t label it as that until I started to look at my own emotional deficits and participated in deep healing classes.

But I couldn’t blame her. It wasn’t her fault. I was only six years old when she had her nervous breakdown. I didn’t realize how much nurturing I wasn’t getting from her. But I knew I didn’t want to be like her in any way, shape or form. The further the distance I could put between us, the less likely I would be reminded I was her daughter. And the easier it was for me to hide from the stigma of her mental illness and the possibility that I could end up like her.

It was with that “history” that I walked into a healing class several years ago based on the book The Mom Factor by bestselling Christian psychologists Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend. These authors identified six common types of mothers: the Phantom Mom, the China Doll Mom, the Controlling Mom, the Trophy Mom, the Still-the-Boss Mom and the American Express Mom. In the class we looked at the characteristics of each of these and identified the result of that type of mothering. I found this process very difficult emotionally. (I had the Phantom Mom.)

I shed many a tear as I started to understand and to grieve what I didn’t get from my mother. I learned how to get my unmet needs met in healthy ways. (The Mom Factor also includes healing steps for the adult children of each mothering type.) I found out it wasn’t too late to get the mothering I hadn’t received. I could be “re-mothered” through the women that God was putting on my path.

Our final class assignment was to write a letter to our mothers about the mothering we received. Although I experienced a lot of healing of my mother wound in this class, I couldn’t do the assignment—at least not according to the instructions. Instead of writing a letter to my mother, I chose to write a letter to my son who was turning 13 at the time. It was a letter admitting my own mothering deficiencies, labeling the type of mother I was, vowing to break the generational curse and, with God’s help, to change my mothering patterns. It was a step in forgiving myself.

One by one the women openly shared their letters to their mothers and then ceremoniously burned them. I waited until last to share my letter—nervous that I would be judged for not doing it right. I openly wept as I read it. There was no judgment or criticism from these other women. We were all on the same journey to wholeness, where grace abounds.

Although I had to wait for God’s timing for the bigger healing of my mother wound as outlined in the story “Walking My Mother Home” (in Journeys to Mother Love), identifying the type of mothering I received was a positive step in the right direction. I know my children are better off for my having done so.

~ Ardis A. Nelson

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Perfect Parenting

10 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by finishingwell2 in forgiving mom, God as our parent, mother wounds, stepmom relationship

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Family, Forgiveness, Modeling the faith, Parenting styles

"Death Was Cheated" - newspaper clipping

Ellen was the “miracle” baby “born” after her pregnant mother died suddenly during a stroll in the park

My parenting style is very different from Mom’s and Dad’s. In Journeys to Mother Love I tell of being raised by a stepmother and only finding out when I was grown that she wasn’t my real mom. That was one of the disappointments and deceptions that I finally was able to forgive (with the Lord’s help), so that we could “finish well.”

When I had my own children, I was sure I could do better than my parents had. So I tried my best to give our children a firm foundation mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

In spite of my good intentions, I wasn’t the perfect parent, either. My children now tell me how they felt on the receiving end of my parenting. “You were strict,” they say. “You were really naive.” etc.

With experience comes understanding. When I was young, I couldn’t understand my parents’ viewpoint because I hadn’t walked in their shoes. Now that I’ve been a parent, too, I can look back and empathize with their struggles as they tried to make the best of what life had dealt them. And, it’s easier to forgive their shortcomings, as I hope my children will forgive mine.

My grown son encouraged me by saying he saw us seeking God and modeling Christ to him and his sister, day after day. And it’s because of that example, that he belongs to Christ today. That’s the best outcome we could have hoped for.

We can’t claim any bragging rights for that, though. God, the perfect parent, lit the flame in his heart and our daughter’s, too. Now, as part of His family, God is maturing them as only He knows how. Thank you, Lord.

~ Ellen Cardwell

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Mother Love

17 Friday Aug 2012

Posted by Christina in emotional needs, expectations, forgiving mom, God's healing love, importance of prayer, mother wounds, reconciliation, the healing journey

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Life is like a Ferris wheel going round and round, repeating itself over and over, sometimes you find yourself on the top looking out over your life. You think, ‘This is good; I could go on like this forever.’ But as soon as you get really comfortable with that thought, you feel yourself slowly slipping over the edge, descending toward some unknown yet familiar pit that consumes you until you feel the wheel slowly ascending to the top again.

I read this passage with its beautiful imagery in Katie’s Choice, a novel by Tracey Langford. The character in her story thinks about the seasons of the year, like football and Thanksgiving and Easter and how these event staples in our lives reliably return year by year. I picture each “car” of the Ferris wheel carrying people who enter and sometimes exit our lives, but have still been a part of the ride or journey. And who we have, for better or worse, developed a relationship with. Sometimes those relationships also go through a similar pattern—up and down, seeing a promising future and then feeling like we can’t connect well.

But there is one relationship that was always there. One that started before we were born. One we felt and treasured in our own limited way, even in the beginning: The one with our mother.

This site is dedicated to that Mother Love, even when it takes a round-about journey to get there. I believe that a complete healing and wholeness can be found in any mother-child relationship, even if you thought it was too late.

That is the premise of the collection of stories written by nine women in Journeys to Mother Love: Nine Women Tell their Stories of Forgiveness & Healing, compiled by Catherine Lawton and published by Cladach Publishing (www.cladach.com). No matter what your background, you will find yourself drawn to these stories and be able to relate to many of the feelings, experiences, and challenges these women have faced. And maybe, like them, you will find more healing and closure through God’s love, forgiveness and peace than you ever imagined!

Here are the stories in the book:

1. FEELING INADEQUATE:
Run, Run as Fast as You Can by A.R. Cecil

2.  DEVASTATED by VIOLENCE and SEPARATION:
She Did Her Best by Treva Brown

3.  ALWAYS “SECOND FIDDLE”:
Take Care of Your Mother by Verna Hill Simms

4.  ADJUSTING to CHANGES in MOM:
Finding the Blessings in Alzheimer’s by Kerry Luksic

5.  AFTER ABORTION and CANCER:
Beauty from Barrenness by Kyleen Stevenson-Braxton

6.  UNMET EMOTIONAL NEEDS:
When I Feel Forsaken by Catherine Lawton

7.  STEPMOTHER BLUES:
Finishing Well by Ellen Cardwell

8.  DISTANCED by a MENTAL DISORDER:
Walking My Mother Home by Ardis A. Nelson

9.  ANGRY and FRUSTRATED with MOM:
White Knuckles by Loritta Slayton

Do you have a wonderful relationship with your mom and/or your children today? We hope you do! And we would love to hear your story, too. You are not alone! This is a place to connect and to share. A place where you can find Christians who have gone through similar struggles … or are still going through them.

Whether you are looking at life from the upside or the downside, God cares. And so do we.

~ Christina Slike

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  • arcecil
    • The Imperfect Job of Mothering
    • Storing Away Christmas ~ THE GOD BOX
    • Who Am I?
    • THE GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT
    • STAIRCASE TO A BETTER PLACE AND TIME
    • What? You Can’t Stop Crying
  • ardisanelson
    • A Mother’s Day Gift to my Sons
    • Sharing our Stories in Community
    • A Grateful Lesson in Letting go of our Children
    • The Blessing of ‘Imperfect’ Children
    • “You’re Just Like Your Mother”
    • A Journey to Brother Love, Part 2
  • Catherine Lawton
    • We Come Trembling
    • New Beginnings
    • Living Wounds
    • Loneliness
    • What? You Can’t Stop Crying
    • Faith in the Birthing Room
  • finishingwell2
    • Mom’s Cooking
    • Always a Mother
    • Postscript to “Finishing Well”
    • Perfect Parenting
  • good2bfree
    • A Mother’s Legacy
    • Grace to Broken Mamas on Mother’s Day
  • guestmom
    • Forgiving Yourself — and Your Children
    • If Your Child is a Prodigal
    • Helicopter Mom, You’re Creating a Draft
  • Kerry Luksic
    • The Gift of Faith
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    • Dreading Mother’s Day
    • “Mom-ness”
    • The Power of Sharing Your Deepest Secrets 
    • Adopted Siblings ~ A Special Closeness
    • Walking In Faith Through Adoption
    • Honesty about Our Struggles is the Best Way to Help Each Other
  • lorittaslayton
  • Christina
    • Grandma’s Apron
    • Much Ado about Nothing but Love
    • Mother Love
  • vernahsimms
    • A Letter to Mom
    • A Gift of Flowers
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Adopted children challenges of motherhood childhood memories confessing our need emotional needs encouraging each other expectations family gatherings feeling inadequate forgiving mom forgiving yourself frustration to freedom generational patterns generations coming together God's healing love God as our parent Gratitude grief and loss healing after abortion importance of prayer Learning to appreciate Mom leaving a legacy letting go of anger losing mom too soon Motherhood mother wounds Parenting reach out and touch the healing journey when tragedy hits

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