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Journeys To Mother Love

~ Encouragement and healing in mother/child relationships

Journeys To Mother Love

Category Archives: God’s healing love

We Come Trembling

22 Monday May 2017

Posted by Catherine Lawton in confessing our need, God's healing love, mother wounds, reach out and touch, the healing journey

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Tags

authentic relationship, Courage to be honest, Emotional and spiritual healing, Healing love

http://freechristimages.org/images_healing/CanaaniteWomanTouch.jpg

The word “mother” conjures up warm and fuzzy images: hugs, smiles, meals on the table, and bedtime stories. And, of course, forever etched in our minds are Mother’s words of warning, advice, scolding and encouragement. Our mothers have largely made us what we are. “Mother is the home we come from. She is nature, soil, ocean,” said Erich Fromm. “All I am and ever hope to be I owe to my angel mother,” said Abraham Lincoln.

However, most mothers aren’t angels! “Unfortunately, in our fallen humanity, there are few perfect parents…. Many people carry wounds or voids they incurred early in life from one or both of their parents, such as unmet needs, absence, neglect, harsh words … Nevertheless, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the Lord can go back and fill in any of those wounds with his perfect love,” say Francis and Judith MacNutt of Christian Healing Ministries.

My mother was a wonderful person, loved by many. I’m thankful for her and for the faith she passed on to me. She was my security. She sang to me, cheered me, more than once rescued me. But there were critical times when she wasn’t—or couldn’t—”be there” for me when traumatic things happened. Perhaps the wounds she carried from the neglect and abandonment she experienced as a very young child hindered her ability to deal with the emotional needs of her own little girl.

Some of my friends carry mother wounds because they have been distanced from their mother’s love by separation, bad choices, generational patterns, emotional coldness, disease, skewed priorities, and even death.

Why would we want to share the personal wounds?

Why do I share about the wounds I carried into young adulthood from early childhood—wounds of trauma, fear, shame, and unmet emotional needs? I share this only because I also experienced real healing. The Lord touched me several times during my life in powerful, targeted ways that brought change, healing, and freedom! That is the real story.

We tell enough of the hurts for the reader to “feel” the needs we had for inner healing and relational healing … so you can also “feel” the wonder and beauty and power of our God who restores our souls!

Woman Jesus healed

This morning I read in Luke about Jesus healing the woman with “an issue of blood,” who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She came up behind Jesus silently, unseen in the crowd, and touched the hem of Jesus’ garment. But he noticed. He felt power going out of himself. He turned and questioned her. “When the woman saw she could not remain hidden, she came trembling; and falling down before him” in front of the gawking crowd she confessed her need and her faith. Because of her faith—and Jesus’ power—the woman was restored to health. Jesus told her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace” (Luke 8).

I think the contributors to Journeys to Mother Love (both the book and the blog) are like that woman. We’d rather keep silent about the pain and shame. But we are compelled to reach out. We came trembling to Jesus, confessing our need and faith. Now we come trembling, sharing with you our experiences of the healing power of Jesus (and of mother love).

Come share the journey with us.

~ Catherine Lawton

(This post first published Nov 10, 2012.)

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A Mother’s Day Gift to my Sons

10 Wednesday May 2017

Posted by ardisanelson in generations coming together, God's healing love, leaving a legacy, mother wounds, Mother's Day, the healing journey

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authentic relationship, Children, Emotional and spiritual healing, Forgiveness, God's promises, Healing love, Modeling the faith, Mother's Day, Mothering, Praying for our children

The last time I saw my mother alive was seven years ago over Mother’s Day weekend.  As I wrote in “Walking My Mother Home,” my story in Journeys to Mother Love, these trips back home were instrumental to my healing.

In 2012, during the editing process of the book, I decided to give the manuscript as a gift to my sons.  After my mother’s passing the year before, I’d had a heartfelt conversation with them. I tried to explain the significance of what had happened to me.  Now with the imminent publishing of the story “for the whole world to see,” it was time to give the boys more personal insight into my healing and my journey to mother love.

Here is an excerpt from that letter:

Dear Boys,

As Mother’s Day approached this week, I’ve been reminded many times that the last time I saw my mother alive was on Mother’s Day 2010. A lot has happened in our lives in the two years since then…

Since you are males, you will probably never understand the bond between a mother and daughter. But you will marry one day and will have to understand and be caring with your own wife and the relationship that she has with her mother. I hope and pray that I can have a loving relationship with my daughters-in-law too.

As you know, I didn’t have a close relationship with my mother, not so much by choice, but by natural consequence because of her mental illness. As my mother neared the end of her life though, God made it very clear to me that I needed closure and restoration with our relationship. The attached manuscript is that story.

What I hope and pray you will see in this story is the same thing I want others to see—how following God’s will for our lives, through the good and the bad, leads to amazing blessings.  I want you to embrace opportunities when God wants to use you. It won’t be easy. But that is where the biggest blessings come into play—when we are stretched beyond our comfort zone and have to rely on Him. He shows up when we lean on Him. We just have to trust Him.

So as I start on my writing journey, I wanted you to know that is exactly what I am doing. I am trusting that God is behind this and that He will use it.

I love you both dearly. I hope and pray that when you look back at your lives that you will remember that legacy that I want to leave for you. I want you to trust God and follow Him all the days of your life.

‘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)

With all my love,
Mom

My sons didn’t read my manuscript right away. They were teenage boys, after all. When they did, their words of love were a blessing back to me.

I have the same prayer for all who read my story and the other eight stories in Journeys to Mother Love. : May you be inspired by God to embrace forgiveness and healing in their mother/child relationships.  He will redeem your pain and give you peace.

~ Ardis A. Nelson

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Living Wounds

07 Friday Oct 2016

Posted by Catherine Lawton in confessing our need, God's healing love, Inner healing ministry, mother wounds, reach out and touch, the healing journey, Wounded healers

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Tags

Christian spirituality, Courage to be honest, Emotional and spiritual healing, future hope, Healing love

Nail prints in Jesus' hands and feet

 

LIVING WOUNDS

Christ’s wounds—

holes, gaps, gashes?—

remain, continue there,

healed; no pain or festering.

But they remain

places on the body

of the God-Man,

remembering.

A mystery!

There,

in the wounded place

we are part of Christ.

The nails are gone,

the sword withdrawn,

the thorns pulled out.

But these wounds live,

efficacious.

When His followers also

stand gashed and riddled,

touching our wounds to His;

bearing scars from

our own sins and

those of others

but festering no more;

together we form

places of healing

in the body of Christ.

~Catherine Lawton

( ©2016. Excerpted from my forthcoming collection of poetry, Remembering Softly: A Life in Poems)

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Holy Saturday

26 Saturday Mar 2016

Posted by Catherine Lawton in God's healing love, grief and loss, Jesus on the cross, the healing journey, when tragedy hits

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Easter, future hope, Holy Week, life and death, Pieta, Sadness

Detail from the Lutin Pieta (Wikimedia)

Detail from the Lutin Pieta (Wikimedia)

 

During Holy Saturday, between the crucifixion and the resurrection, a time of disappointment, waiting, uncertainty, sadness…. I am reminded of what to do with this “weight of sorrow,” these tears: bring them to Jesus …

  • See him kneeling in the garden, overwhelmed with sorrow, in anguished prayer and sweating drops of blood.
  • See him enduring the cruelest injustice, ridicule, and inflicted pain.
  • See him hanging on the cross agonizing, bleeding, and dying, because of my sins. … read more (What to do with sorrow)

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Hannah Whitall Smith Comparing God’s Love to Mother Love

06 Saturday Feb 2016

Posted by Catherine Lawton in encouraging each other, generations coming together, God as our parent, God's healing love, God's love and Mother love, Motherhood, Parenting, Remembering Mother

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Tags

God the Father, Modeling the faith, mother and daughter, Our children see God in us, Parenting, Sacrificial love

“I do long to be to my children a little faint picture of what God is,” wrote Hannah Whitall Smith to her daughter. This 19-Century writer of classic books of devotion, such as The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life, kept up personal correspondence with many people through letters. Many of her letters are published in the book, The Christian’s Secret of a Holy Life. Here’s a letter Hannah Whitall Smith wrote to her daughter Mary:

Your loving praise is very sweet to me, even though I may think you look through eyes made kinder by love than they by rights ought to be. If only you can learn some little sense of what God is from your thoughts of me, I shall be more than content. I think I have learned more about the character of God from remembering what my own father and mother were to me than in almost any other way. And I do long to be to my children a little faint picture of what God is.

O great heart of God! whose loving

Cannot hindered be, nor crossed;

Will not weary, will not even

In our death itself be lost!

Love divine! of such great loving

Only mothers know the cost,

Cost of love, that, past all loving,

Gave itself to save the lost.

I think I understand this.

As mothers, we have the opportunity to understand God’s self-giving love and know a little of the cost of love.

Our perseverance in loving at all costs will provide our children a clearer picture of the great, self-giving love that God has for them.

~Catherine Lawton

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Healing Grace Like Gentle Rain

18 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by Catherine Lawton in childhood memories, emotional needs, God's healing love, grief and loss, Inner healing ministry, losing mom too soon, mother wounds, the healing journey, when tragedy hits

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Christian spirituality, Emotional and spiritual healing, emotional wounds from childhood, Grief Loss and Bereavement, Healing love, Healing power of poetry, relationships

In Journeys to Mother Love I tell of how I lost my mother at a young age, and I hint at generational blessings as well as generational sins, “curses,” and weaknesses that needed breaking and healing.

When Mother died at age 48, and my dad went through his own bereavement and grief, it seemed the feelings from wounds he experienced as a boy threatened to overtake him again. A new grief will open past griefs and wounds that have been lying dormant but in need of deeper healing.

Feelings that came as a result of growing up with a mother who was beautiful and gentle but unable to show affection to her son, and an overbearing father whose domination turned to cruelty at times, resurfaced. During those months as a widower, my dad sought and experienced deeper healing by the Holy Spirit that gave him more freedom, joy, and wholeness, so he could move on in life and receive and share God’s love.

During that time, he was writing poems. In my experience, and others I know, poetry can be therapeutic and healing in many ways. I’ll share one of those poems here:

———————————————————————————————————————

The Gentle Life

~ ~ ~

The fine, soft, falling mist

soaks finally better than the deluge.

So the life tender and gentle

in love of God

has force in it

that gets through hardest soil

for lasting good—

better than

the mighty in the flesh.

–G.H. Cummings

~ ~ ~

~Catherine Lawton

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Grace to Mothers (and Fathers) Grieving Aborted Babies

08 Friday May 2015

Posted by Catherine Lawton in emotional needs, forgiving yourself, Free to Love, God's healing love, grief and loss, healing after abortion, Mother's Day, Regret transformed, the healing journey, The power of honest sharing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Courage to be honest, Emotional and spiritual healing, Forgiving yourself, future hope, Healing love, life and death, Mother's Day, Post-Abortion Healing, unresolved hurt, Women's Issues

Sunset sky

Mother’s Day is painful for many people, for the bereaved, the childless, and those who suffer from post-abortion grief.

A few years ago I found my mother’s birth family, including three cousins, living not far from me. Recently I visited one male cousin the same age as me (he’s a Baby Boomer and Vietnam Vet, if that gives you an idea of our age).

Though he’s been married more than once, he has no children. Speaking of that fact, he got a little misty-eyed. Then he pointed to a memento sitting atop his TV: a ceramic baby booty. He said it represents a baby he fathered that the mother didn’t allow to come to birth. I know there’s always more to the story, and it’s true I don’t really know much about this “new” cousin’s past. I don’t know what that young woman years ago was going through, either.

I saw the tear in my cousin’s eye, though. And I heard the wistfulness in his voice when he told me he believed there was a child of his that he would meet in Heaven.

I was touched by the emotions of this man, over something that happened several decades ago.

A huge number of abortions have occurred in the years since abortion was legalized in America. If you believe as most Christians do, that babies and young children who die before the age of accountability go to Heaven; and if you believe that unborn babies are persons with eternal souls; then you believe as I do that all those aborted babies will be in Heaven. Perhaps they’ve been growing and developing in the nurture of Jesus and loving saints. Then, what a host of beloved children are waiting there.

My cousin obviously believes and hopes to meet his one child someday in the heavenly realms.

One of our Journeys to Mother Love contributors, Kyleen Stevenson-Braxton, has written movingly about her post-abortion experiences and healing. To my cousin and to Kyleen and to the many women and men who chose abortion when they felt trapped, hopeless, and helpless … the Lord of mercy and grace has healing, hope, and restoration for you. And He is taking care of your child. May that thought give you comfort this Mother’s Day.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This video and the book it is based on, express the emotions that lead to and result from the choice of an abortion:

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Removing Rocks and Hard Places

18 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by Catherine Lawton in Free to Love, God's healing love, Guest Post, Inner healing ministry, Jasona Brown, mother wounds, the healing journey

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Tags

Emotional and spiritual healing, Joyful wholeness, Prayer, unresolved hurt, Women's Issues

jasona-brown

About the time I was compiling the stories in the book, Journeys to Mother Love, I met Jasona Brown, a woman experienced in prayer for inner healing. Jasona has so much to offer in this area, that I want to introduce her to our readers as our first guest blogger:

Guest-Post-logoby Jasona Brown

Catherine, I can relate to so many parts of your story in Journeys to Mother Love because He has ministered to me in similar ways: speaking through Scripture, healing my memories, and even using dreams to bring healing to my soul. He is so beautiful and faithful! Thank you for sharing your story.

Being both a daughter and a mother myself, I know that these relationships are so complex and often fraught with tensions and obstacles. We all need the hope that our failures, shortcomings, and deprivations can be healed and redeemed, and can even be used to lead us into deeper fellowship with the only One whose love is perfect.

I love to hear of the many and varied ways that the Lord ministers love and restoration to our hearts.

We don’t get healed, though, just to be healed, but also so that we can bear “much fruit” in God’s Kingdom: “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last,”( John 15:16). To the degree that we are unhealed, our ability to love God and others as He created us to do is limited; wholeness, especially the joyful kind, frees us to love as He calls us to love. And if we can love our mothers well (honor your father and your mother), we are well on our way!

I love how the apostle John says his joy is made complete by bringing others into the fellowship with the God of love that he has found: “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete,” (1 John 1:3-4).

I pray that Journeys to Mother Love will create in others a desire for healing and the hope to seek the Lord regarding their mother-wounds.

Jasona Brown is a wife (her husband is a pastor) and mother (two girls and one boy) living in Colorado, a long ways from where she grew up in Washington state and Alaska. She is also a seminary graduate with a heart to help people experience joyful wholeness through inner-healing prayer. She blogs at http://thedeepestlove.com/. Jasona’s forthcoming book, Stone by Stone: Tear Down the Wall Between God’s Heart and Yours can be pre-ordered at Amazon by clicking this link: http://amzn.com/1939023572.Stone-by-Stone-coverIn her book, Jasona shares what she has learned through personal experience and years of ministering to others, that when a wall of stones blocks our heart from fully receiving God’s love, we live a stunted Christian life. With Stone by Stone she will help us identify and remove ten stones that may block our intimacy with the God of love including guilt, unforgiveness, and unhealed memories, so that we can live in the joy as God’s beloved sons or daughters.

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A Journey to Brother Love, Part 2

09 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by ardisanelson in confessing our need, emotional needs, encouraging each other, family gatherings, generational patterns, God's healing love, reconciliation, the healing journey

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

a heart filled with love and hope, authentic relationship, Courage to be honest, Emotional and spiritual healing, Family, Finding our identity, Forgiveness, Healing love, relationships, unresolved hurt

With my brothers in 2014

My brother and I with our half-brother (center) in 2014

In the post, A Journey to Brother Love, Part 1, I shared how as an adult I was shocked to learn I had a half-brother. I only met him once, 18 years ago. The opportunity arose to meet him again recently. I didn’t want any regrets, so I traveled to see him.

From the moment we were reunited, my brother was friendly and open, even greeting me with a hug. It felt very welcoming. He is a charming and engaging man. Yet for me, the time spent together was surreal.

What do you say? How do you communicate with a brother who was raised by maternal grandparents since he was two years old because his mother died and he was abandoned by his father (my father)?

Does he even want relationship with me (us)? After all, we were the chosen family.

My parents were married for 17 years before they divorced. I was nine years old at the time. I had my own wounds. It took me years to work through them and forgive my father.

My brother is on his own journey of healing and forgiveness—as are each of us five siblings, from three different marriages. We share the same father and the same DNA, but we all have carried different wounds from the generational curse of abandonment in our family.

I don’t have any wounds related to my half-brother, only compassion for what he endured and experienced, not knowing his earthly father. He has had to come to terms with two dramatically different tales of his abandonment.

Where was he on the spectrum of forgiveness and healing, I wondered.

Except for one private conversation we had where he recounted to me the story of his miraculous reunion with my father after 52 years of separation, our conversations weren’t really about that. I listened as he talked about his previous marriage and painful trials with his adult children. Every time he talked I could see and hear my father in him. My half-brother wasn’t raised by him, but my father is unmistakably in his DNA.

At the end of our visit, I still didn’t have the answers I sought. So I invited him and his wife to walk me into the train station to say our goodbyes. I didn’t want any regrets. I prayed and let my heart lead the way.

The conversation that ensued was perfectly ordained by the Lord. It started off tearful for me as I admitted I am a sentimental person. I think we both said what we needed to say and cleared the air about our own personal father wounds. I already knew I wasn’t alone in my struggle to overcome my past, and I wanted him to know he wasn’t either.

The icing on the cake for me was being able to share with him my sense that our father was at peace in heaven. Shortly after Dad died, I had a poignant spiritual encounter in church while praying. Shortly after that, Dad acknowledged that he hadn’t “been there” for me. The veil had been lifted for him and his denial was gone. That encounter was very comforting to me, and I hoped sharing the memory with my brother would bring him some healing and closure also.

So was my family visit for my healing, or my brother’s healing? I think it was for us both.

My journey with my new-found brother is just beginning. It took my Journey to Mother Love followed by my Journey to Father Love to find it. When our journeys are bathed in our Heavenly Father’s love, it will end with healing and hope; because His DNA is what really binds us on our pathway to wholeness.

~ Ardis A. Nelson

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A Journey to Brother Love, Part 1

09 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by ardisanelson in emotional needs, family gatherings, generational patterns, God's healing love, letting go of anger, reach out and touch, reconciliation, the healing journey

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

a heart filled with love and hope, authentic relationship, Courage to be honest, Emotional and spiritual healing, Family, Finding our identity, Forgiveness, Healing love, relationships, unresolved hurt

1996 Reunion

With my father and brothers in 1996

Recently a new pathway of healing opened up to me: a “journey to brother love.”

My father married many times and had children from multiple wives—my siblings being the last. I grew up knowing about an older half-sister, but never met her. I didn’t know about a half-brother I had until 18 years ago when my father reunited with him after 52 years of separation.

I was in my early 30s, just starting my own family when my father called to tell me about my half-brother. It was an ‘Oprah’ type story of amazing coincidences that led to their reunion.

I felt like my world had been turned upside down.

My father invited me and another sibling to meet him. The half-brother lived across country and was making a trip to our area. I eagerly obliged, or maybe obeyed is a better word. This was in my pre-recovery days when I was still holding onto the past, carrying a lot of anger, and searching for my father’s love. Now I had to share that love with some long-lost family member.  My resentment must’ve leaked through in that one and only meeting.

My father remained in close contact with his new-found son over the years. They had several cross-country visits. I occasionally heard of their trips together. Each time I nursed my internal pangs: “But what about me?”

Since that time, I’ve spent many years of healing and recovery work to get to a place of forgiveness and love for my father. My dad even helped with some family history while I was working on the final draft of my story in Journeys to Mother Love. Unfortunately, he passed away a month before the book was released.

My half-brother couldn’t make it to our father’s memorial service. My stepmother (not his mother), ordered an autographed copy for me to send to my brother’s wife. I had experienced even more healing and forgiveness with my father wound with his passing. With that fresh perspective, I decided to send a letter to my brother, along with the book.

Here’s an excerpt from that letter: “I think each of his (my father’s) children carry a distinct Smith* mark in their DNA that we had to overcome as his children. And just because we had more physical time living with him, it doesn’t mean we didn’t carry familial scars. I say this to you in the hopes that you won’t let any of those feelings get in the way of continuing to stay connected with this family.”

Soon I received a nice note from his wife telling me how much she loved the book and that my story touched her as she grieved the recent loss of her mother. We continued our communications, but there was no direct response from my brother.

Then a few weeks ago I got a call from my stepmother that my half-brother and his wife were going to be in town. I was invited to come home for a visit. At first I declined due to an already full schedule. But thoughts of my brother and our disjointed family connection kept surfacing.

Did I need more healing or was it for my brother? I needed to know.

So I set aside my work and hopped on a train across the state.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this post to find out how this Journey to Brother Love ends.

~ Ardis A. Nelson

*Surname changed to protect family privacy.

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Mental Illness and Relationships

15 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by Catherine Lawton in emotional needs, generational patterns, God's healing love, grief and loss, the healing journey

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

authentic relationship, Courage to be honest, Effects of mental illness on relationships, Emotional and spiritual healing

Ocean-waves-Bodega

Suicide has touched us all in some way, even if it’s seeing the stories and feeling the sadness of a celebrity suicide such as Robin Williams’.

For me it’s more personal, since in the past year my husband and I lost both a relative and a friend to suicide. There are still hurts and unanswered questions.

Much is being said about mental illness, addictions, and suicide by both secular and religious pundits and bloggers.

In her story in the book, Journeys to Mother Love, Ardis Nelson tells of the pain of having a mentally-ill mother. Ardis writes:

“Mom was given shock treatments and she was never the same after that. … Diagnosed with schizophrenia [she] was in and out of mental hospitals. For my own sense of sanity, I kept her at a distance. I didn’t trust what she told me. I pretty much wrote off my mother. It was just too painful to be her daughter. All I could ‘see’ was that she was crazy. … Growing up, I internalized the subtle messages that my emotions were not something I should share and in fact, that if I did, there must be something wrong with me — like my mother.  Fearful of becoming crazy, I learned to shut down my emotions and not share them with anyone.”

Ardis goes on to tell how the opportunity came, at the end of her mother’s life, for healing in their relationship. This opened the door for even wider and deeper healing in Ardis’s life.

In the isolation and pain that depression, mental illness, and suicidal thoughts can cause, what is needed is openness, communication, honest words.

God, help us be bridges of mercy to others.

In her blog two days ago, Ann Voskamp expressed this need — and her own experience with a mentally-ill mother — eloquently. You may want to click there and read her words, and open your heart to grace, and beauty, and hope:

http://www.aholyexperience.com/2014/08/what-the-church-christians-need-to-know-about-suicide-mental-health/

~Catherine

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Imperfect Relationships

08 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by Catherine Lawton in God's healing love, the healing journey

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

authentic relationship, Christian spirituality, giving and receiving, relationships

Water lilies

Rubbing shoulders (or petals) with others

Are any of my relationships—is even one—really pure? Unmixed with even the tiniest amount of self-interest, misunderstanding, impatience, emotional baggage, regret, frustration, neglect?

I consider each relationship as it comes to mind: interactions with my husband, children, grandchildren, parents, siblings, in-laws, relatives, step family, friends, church people, neighbors, acquaintances, even the strangers I meet.

Many of these relationships and interactions give me life and consolation. Almost all the time, I appreciate and enjoy them. But in both the give and the take of each two-way relationship, there is imperfection. Even in my relationship with the Lord, only from His side is it perfect.

“Help me, Lord, as I stand in relationship to others, to open my heart to you as a flower opens to the sun; to look for you every moment; to see you in others; and thus to find life and bring life into each relationship and interaction.”

~Catherine

 

 

 

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No Regret Wasted

03 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by Catherine Lawton in confessing our need, feeling inadequate, frustration to freedom, God's healing love, Regret transformed, the healing journey

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Emotional and spiritual healing, Forgiving yourself, Healing love, Parenting, Striving for perfection

MorePhotos 023

My friend, Jasona, shares wise words that we mothers need to heed. Being a good mother isn’t about having no regrets. … Read on and find out why.

The Deepest Love

This week I listened as two anxious people said to me in separate conversations, “my goal is live so that I have no regrets.” I’ll bet you have heard people give voice to the abbreviated form of this mantra: “No regrets.” Maybe you have even said it yourself.

Though people often mean by this phrase that they want to live with no fear, seizing life at every opportunity, I sensed as my friends spoke that, rather than bringing the joy of freedom, the “no regrets” mantra, ironically, crushed the hearts of my friends under an impossible weight. One spoke of parenting small children, wanting to be so attentive, playful, and present to her children that she would not regret her parenting when they were raised, and the other spoke of making choices in ministry, desiring to risk for God to the degree that she would look back on her life with no regrets.

So…

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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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Journeying Together: A Group Interview

05 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by Catherine Lawton in childhood memories, confessing our need, encouraging each other, God's healing love, the healing journey

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authentic relationship, Courage to be honest, Emotional and spiritual healing, Finding our identity, friendship, life's upward path, milestones, Mothering, personal discoveries

Meadow-flowers-sillouette copy
All nine of us participated in this group interview, answering questions about our stories in the book, Journeys to Mother Love. We’ve enjoyed getting to know each other better through this process, almost as if we were sitting around a living room and sharing round the circle. Pull up a chair and listen in!

INTERVIEW

1. Did you laugh or cry, or both, while you were writing your story?a pink butterfly

Ellen Cardwell: Surprisingly, I didn’t do either. Rather, writing the story released something inside that needed to come out. I feel lighter now whenever Mom comes to mind.

Treva Brown: I completely did both. I also felt anger, but was able to fully release it quickly.

Ardis Nelson: I went away to a secluded camp so I could focus on writing and prayer. I cried at times. Now my tears are tears of joy.

Kerry Luksic: In writing this story, I had plenty of tears. My mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s eight years ago. It was hard to accept that there’s no cure and that it’s progressive–Mom would only get worse through each heartbreaking stage. But in sharing this story, the tears I shed were healing for me.

Loritta Slayton: I don’t think I did either, but I felt the emotions again–the upset, the struggle and the joy of what God accomplished in me that I couldn’t do for myself.

Kyleen Stevenson-Braxton: I always cry when I write about God’s grace in giving me two beautiful adopted children. It reminds me afresh of his mercy and love.

a pink butterfly2. What do you especially relate to in one or more of the other women’s stories? 

A.R. (Alice) Cecil: I can relate to all the other authors in JOURNEYS TO MOTHER LOVE. We all found the only way to healing is through Jesus Christ, and we all want to help others by sharing our experience.

Catherine Lawton: Treva Brown tells of how her mother died even younger than mine did (and by much more violent circumstances). I relate to her regret over some of the words she had said to her mother, and wishing she had said certain other words before it was too late.

Ellen: The last part of Loritta Slayton’s story, “White Knuckles,” took me back to when my mother needed my help and our roles were reversed. God encouraged and enabled her to let go of hurt feelings and journey down the path to love.

Treva: In “Walking My Mother Home” Ardis Nelson wrote, “I was embracing the parts of my mother that were in me.” I am currently doing that now, so it really touched my heart.

Ardis: I think I was the most moved by Loritta’s story. I felt her pain with each decision she made along her journey with her mother. The ending to her story was a fitting ending to the book—very encouraging.

Loritta: The emotional process of their hurts being released to God and their journeys of walking it out with Him speak to me. I was moved by Treva’s descriptions of this process.

a pink butterfly  3. In what point in your relationship with your mother or child did you realize you needed relational healing?

Alice: My mother was always closer to me than any of her other children; I sensed her unhappiness and wanted to try to be there for her. Then in my early twenties I left home for the city to work. Transported into the world, I began to see not all the ways in my childhood home matched the ordinary way of going about life.

Catherine: The need in my heart became evident when I was going through grief over my mother’s death. As you can read in the book, the Lord has ways of healing our relationships even when separated by distance, disease or death.

Ellen: When I was a new Christian and learned how important it was to forgive others. Also at that time, the relationship with our mothers was a topic of discussion with my close friends, all of whom felt they had emotional gaps that their parents, especially their mothers, hadn’t filled.

Treva: Years after she died. It was a hard journey because I was unable to talk to my mom and hear her respond. But I wouldn’t change a thing, for that is where I truly encountered God.

Loritta: I knew most of my life that it wasn’t what it should be. But when I read A Daughter’s Journey Home, by Dr. Linda Mintle, some of the pieces of the puzzle came into focus. I began to pray about my relationship with my mother and ask God to work in us. And my journaling with God and the listening practice opened the door significantly.

4. What makes the mother/child relationship so significant? a pink butterfly

Ardis: I think the mother/child relationship is a mirror of the love our heavenly father has for us.

Kerry: I never realized until I had my own children, but at the end of the day, a mother’s love for a child is the strongest bond that exists.

Kyleen: I think that, since I wanted children and was unable to have them, it has made me appreciate what so many women take for granted. I envy the blessings of being pregnant, of giving birth, of seeing your features in your child’s face, of knowing they came from your body. But God has taught me that he is the maker of families, and I am blessed knowing that Jesus, too, was adopted (by Joseph). So my children are to me the very face of God. To me they represent all that he is – his goodness, kindness, and love.

5. What events, sensory experiences, etc., trigger your memories of a pink butterflyyour mother?

Catherine: My mother had a quip, saying, or song for every situation or occasion, it seemed. Those sayings and songs pop into my head often and remind me of her. I still “hear” her voice.

Ellen: Going to the farmer’s market, smelling apple pies baking … sewing, bringing flowers into the house … Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.

Treva: A certain Dolly Parton song, camping and eating spaghetti. My mom loved spaghetti.

Ardis: This may sound strange, but I think I am most reminded of my mother in my writing and speaking opportunities. I feel that she would be proud of me for who I am finally becoming, and that gives me a great sense of her presence with me. In a way, this makes up for not having her there when I was young.

Loritta: She enjoyed flowers and colors in shades of purples, aquas, violets. Just this week I walked past orchids in the grocery store that are tinted in those tones and thought of her.

6. Do you ever see your mom in yourself?  a pink butterfly

Catherine: Every time I make the choice and the effort to be positive, to engage with other people when I feel like pulling away … I think of my mother who modeled those attitudes to me.

Ellen: Yes. She had an authoritative way of speaking. She would make pronouncements (not always based on facts), pontificate, and discourage discussion. I still find myself sounding like her, even though I’ve tried for years to overcome it. When I notice myself doing the same thing, it lets me know how ingrained her attitudes were/are in me. I feel frustrated that it’s still there inside my personality. Then I’m motivated to revisit my efforts to change and make it more of a priority to do so.

Treva: At times I do. I used to despise it. But God was able to bring me to a place of embracing those characteristics and bring me more understanding of my mom.

Verna Hill Simms: I remind myself of Mother every time I sit in the living room and watch for the mail carrier. Mail means a lot to me as it did to her.

Ardis: This question hits to the core area of my personal healing when my mother died. I was able to integrate and embrace the parts of my mother that I had been rejecting all my life. Thanks to the Lord’s work in me, I am no longer embarrassed by our similarities.

Kerry: Yes. I especially see my mom in myself when I’m faced with a tough challenge. My mom never gave up on anything and she leaned on her faith during the hardest times. When I’m going through a tough time, I think of mom and follow her example. Whenever I feel like life is a bit too hard, I remember my mom’s example and immediately feel stronger.

7. In what way is mother love a journey?   a pink butterfly

Alice: I wonder how God would have brought me along without children! I know there are people who do not have children and who have a deep relationship with God, but God knew I needed children!

Ellen: For me, mother love grew from an unrealistic ideal to a reality based on experience. Each stage of our children’s growth, from elementary school to junior high to high school has challenges of its own. As I journeyed along with my children, my love was tested, strengthened and developed through the ups and downs they experienced. My love grew from the tenderest feelings for our infants to caring for their needs while juggling other responsibilities, to tough love as they tested boundaries. Mother love survived the smooth and rocky places along the path because, I believe, it originates in God’s love for us all.

Ardis: I am seeing this theme poignantly in my life now. Just today I had a conversation with my 15 year old son about this. We had connecting time while attending a doctor’s appointment. I didn’t have any of that with my parents. I am embracing the journey of learning how to mother anew, be a “sister” to Rosa, an “aunt” to Pedro, and a daughter to my stepmother. This journey is connecting me with my heart and allowing me to share it with others.

Kerry: Mother love is a journey because life is a journey. There are ups and there are downs; there are moments of joy and moments of sheer pain; but through all of it, love is the foundation. My mom has progressed to the advanced-stage of Alzheimer’s and this is the final destination in our journey. Alzheimer’s is a heartbreaking disease, but I have peace knowing that at the end of my mom’s journey here on earth, she will be rewarded for her lifetime of love. faith, and determination–the gift of Heaven.

Loritta: You can’t understand everything from one vantage point. You have to climb that mountain and look back sometimes, and other times you just have to put your hand in God’s and let Him talk to you about what you need to know that only He can reveal in a way that you can receive.

Kyleen: Learning to love unconditionally, to bring out the best in your children, to be their cheerleader and to guide them with kindness is not always easy, especially when your own relationship with your mother was strained. Still, it is a noble and worthy endeavor. This is the journey God asks us to take as mothers.

All the authors and their stories

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