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Journeys To Mother Love

~ Encouragement and healing in mother/child relationships

Journeys To Mother Love

Tag Archives: relationships

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New Beginnings

03 Tuesday Jan 2017

Tags

Christian spirituality, new beginnings, new year resolution, Prayer, relationships

New Year's Resolutions postcard“Have you made any new year’s resolutions?” my grown son asked me, turning the tables. When he was growing up, I’d ask him that question each time a new year rolled around.

Some of my resolutions/goals for the year are more spiritual/relational/subjective. Can’t put a ruler to them and measure success. Others are more concrete. I can look back at the end of the year, even along the way, and see progress.

As years come and go my new-year resolutions are becoming prayer lists. I’m learning there isn’t any real success without the working of God’s Spirit in the situation. I will need his grace every moment, every day of the coming year.

At the beginning of last year, one of my resolutions and prayers was for healing and renewal in some relationships that had become strained. This seems tricky because there are two sides involved. But when God is invited into the relationship there are three, and for his part he is working on all sides, giving new eyes to see, ears to hear the other person, desire for fellowship. The results may not be measurable with a calculator. They are felt, though, and I know God has worked his wonders in those relationships I both resolved and prayed about a year ago.

Measurable resolutions I’ve made: eat better, exercise more, be more faithful to pray daily for family members, write more, practice piano more, see more of the beautiful state we live in, identify 125 species of birds this year.

Have you made any new year’s resolutions? Can you look back and see how God has helped you realize any of last year’s resolutions? Are you thanking the Lord for his help the past year and praying over this year’s list?

New beginnings, such as a new year, give us the opportunity to reflect and return and be restored in what really matters to us and to our Creator.

“In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” Isaiah 30:15

~ Catherine Lawton (first published this post Jan. 3, 2013)

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Posted by Catherine Lawton | Filed under importance of prayer, the healing journey

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Storing Away Christmas ~ THE GOD BOX

04 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by arcecil in emotional needs, frustration to freedom, Mom and Christmas, Relinquishment

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

After Christmas, Holidays, letting go, personal discoveries, relationships, Women's Issues

©Lisa Risager (Wikimedia)

©Nevit Dilmen (Wikimedia)

The boxes sit all around me, saying, “Okay. When are you going to fill us with Christmas ornaments and take us back down to the basement?” They can no longer be ignored. Well, I’ll ignore them a little longer because these boxes have reminded me of all the other boxes in my life. And I want to tell you about them …

I am a woman. Women have many, many boxes in their brains. This truth was confirmed to me by the teaching of Mark Gungor, who leads marriage seminars. He uses the word picture of boxes to convey the various areas of our lives that are important to us. He goes on to say that all the boxes in a woman’s brain are connected by wires to all the other boxes. He is so right. Women do connect the house box to the husband box, which is connected to the boxes for children, grandchildren, meals, travel, extended family, memories, weather, books, church, and shopping.

Personally, I found this approach to life exhausting. One box could short-circuit all the other boxes. Then I realized I had one more box, immeasurably bigger than all the others. So, I disconnected the wires that ran from each small box to other small boxes, took those wires and connected them to the Big Box.

The Big Box is God, of course. All those small boxes are still open at the same time, but they are only seen as they relate to the Big Box. No one small box can ever stop me in my tracks again. Even when information from the wire of a small box is delivering unpleasant information into the Big Box—once it is in there, it doesn’t stand a chance of dominating my time and energy. The situation or the relationship is put into perspective. It’s now in the God Box, or—to use a more familiar expression—in God’s hands.

All the memories connected to these Christmas ornaments—I place them now in God’s hands.

I’ll go back to storing away Christmas.

But isn’t that just like God to take a few empty boxes—that came out of the house box—have them meet in the Big Box with the writing box … and out pops a post?

~A.R. (Alice) Cecil

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Anonymous Graveside Flowers and the Eternal Now

12 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by Catherine Lawton in Adopted children, childhood memories, encouraging each other, grief and loss, Influence of Grandparents, reach out and touch, the healing journey

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Adoption, Family, future hope, Grief Loss and Bereavement, life and death, relationships

Inskeep-graveside

My sister (right) and me at our grandparents’ grave

My sister, Beverly, visited me this month and we took a trip to the town where our grandparents lived. We searched the cemetery until we found their grave sites. Grandpa died about the time I got married. Grandma died just before I gave birth to my daughter. As I was moving forward in my own life, their earthly lives were ending. So the generations go. Walter and Edith Inskeep adopted our mother as a small child. They provided a loving and secure upbringing for her; and they gave my sister and me unmatched affection as the grandparents of our youth.

For Beverly and me, finding our grandparents’ graves and their tiny, now-rundown house, was a pilgrimage. These humble, hard-working, faithful people poured unconditional love and encouragement into our early lives. Since Mother was raised an only child then died quite young (in 1977), we lost contact with the extended family of Inskeeps.

Maybe that’s why it meant so much to see that someone, after all these years, had placed flowers on their graves.

Every Inskeep grave we found had flowers. Seeing those flowers after almost 40 years, did something for my heart. Those flowers made me feel:

  • Comforted. When I am too far away to show honor to the memory of those who loved and prayed for and cared for me, someone nearby is doing just that.
  • Connected, somehow, with the living as well as the dead.
  • Concrete Immediacy. I cherish the memories and the photos of long-ago departed, dear loved ones; but the memories grow more and more distant and far away. Those flowers carefully placed by human hands at the graveside gave me a sense of Now.

I wished for a way to say thank-you to the anonymous flower tender. I pray that every time the anonymous person tends those flowers, God will fill their heart with hope and a sense of the eternal now and eternal connectedness for honoring the memory of such good people.

~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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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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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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What Was Written in Father’s Eyes

15 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by Catherine Lawton in childhood memories, emotional needs, generational patterns, Parenting, reach out and touch, the healing journey

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

authentic relationship, Courage to be honest, Expressing feelings, fathers day, giving and receiving, relationships

Ships on the Sea

Today on Father’s Day I’m thinking about family relationships. I believe we all have a strong desire, perhaps a need, to know and be known by significant others in our lives. But so many things can get in the way of really knowing someone (and letting them know us). I’m talking about knowing who we really are inside: our dreams, our disappointments, our hopes, our memories, our beliefs, our motivations.

Even the people we live with, including those who gave birth to us and raised us, and have lived with us day and night for years, can remain largely a mystery. The pain that comes from being practical strangers to those we are closest to, is a pain that people can carry even into old age.

A.R. (Alice) Cecil describes this type of relationship with her father and mother when she was a little girl. In her story “Run, Run as Fast As You Can” from the book, Journeys to Mother Love, she writes:

In recent years, I have learned my father saw unbelievable atrocities while overseas and came back a different man than the husband of four months, who left when Pearl Harbor became his call to bear arms. He never spoke of the war, but its effect must have been what was written in his eyes. There was a far-off look that I noticed when he thought no one was looking. Was the look in his eyes a result of what he left behind on the front or what he returned to find?

In my mother’s heart were sorrows he could not have understood. My parents belonged to a generation that did not talk about their feelings. So, my father did what he could and lived by reading seed catalogs in the winter and planting tomatoes in the spring. My part was to simply trail along, not asking any questions or breaking into wherever his thoughts had taken him. As I was my mother’s companion for TV’s “Guiding Light,” I was my father’s silent confidante, ever ready to pour out words of encouragement and comfort whenever he chose to turn and acknowledge me. If he ever had, I would have told him, “I know you work really hard and you don’t have time for fun, but I just want you to know how much I love you.” Instead, all I could do was trail along behind him…

Instinctively, I knew my role in life was to be good. How could I possibly add to my mother’s or father’s pain?

It’s not too late. Today let’s “turn and acknowledge” those around us, listen to them, find out what makes them tick. Let them know “where our thoughts have taken us.” Take “time for fun.” Say “I love you.” And let them see windows into our souls.

~Catherine Lawton

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Sorrow and Hope at Christmas

19 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by Catherine Lawton in God's healing love, grief and loss, losing mom too soon, the healing journey, when tragedy hits

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Christian spirituality, Christmas, Emotional and spiritual healing, Family, future hope, God's promises, Holidays, life and death, life stages, Mother, relationships

Journeys To Mother Love

Ah, Christmas! Bright lights, hustle and bustle, joyous music and celebrations….

Yet, hidden behind all the glitter, many people feel the pangs of sadness and loneliness more acutely during the Christmas season. If you have ever experienced a great loss at Christmastime, the holiday season awakens that grief again each year.

I know. My mother died on December 19, 1977. My father was the pastor of a loving church at the time, and the people were sweet to us, though they also grieved the death of their beloved pastor’s wife. Our family found comfort in togetherness—my husband and I with our two toddlers, my sister, and our dad. After the funeral, we stayed and spent Christmas in our parents’ home, with everything around us to remind us of Mother. … But no mother. She was not there and would never be again.

At a time when we celebrated the birth…

View original post 476 more words

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Can a Child of Unhappy Parents Become a Happy Adult?

30 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by arcecil in confessing our need, emotional needs, encouraging each other, God as our parent, God's healing love, rejecting lies, the healing journey

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

a heart filled with love and hope, authentic relationship, Courage to be honest, Emotional and spiritual healing, Family, Finding our identity, life stages, mother and daughter, relationships, Sadness

A mother holds up her child.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

TRUE HAPPINESS

Recently I was given the honor of preparing and presenting my testimony at the Christian Women’s Club. The club gives each speaker 25 minutes. Reading the entire story straight from the book would take well over an hour. I would have to condense my story. Through this painful process of condensing, the Lord revealed to me a significant personal truth. Perhaps I have been the only one who did not see what was between the lines. I probably needed someone to say, “Oh, I see what you are saying.” And I then I could have responded by asking, “What? Tell me what you see.”

Since no one has been that brave, God decided to step in. I can picture him now, thinking this through: I’ll orchestrate a circumstance that will pull the personal truth out of the text! She has had a glimmer of this fact before, but now she is ready for a deeper revelation.

Our Lord knew I was ready for the bigger picture. So, I began: delete, delete, and delete some more (Oh, some of my favorite parts are falling on the cutting room floor!). Then, I added a few sentences to make up for all the deleted information. First a quote from the book: “As I was my mother’s companion for TV’s ‘Guiding Light,’ I was my father’s silent confidante, ever ready to pour out words of encouragement and comfort whenever he chose to turn and acknowledge me.” Now for the condensed add-on: “As a child, I was powerless to help my mother and father find happiness. So, I determined to someday bring happiness to them. I would lift then up on the shoulders of my happiness.”

Wow! Really? Why didn’t someone point this out to me? So, that’s what I have been doing all these years! I took on the responsibility for my parents’ happiness (and you can imagine how that life-long, self-imposed commitment played out!). Innocent children have an innate, unconditional love for their parents. They want their mother and father to be happy. They experience deep sadness when their mother and/or father is sad.

Recently I went to the downtown part of our city to take care of my mother’s business. She is in a nursing home and, since her money has been spent down, she is on Medicaid. I lingered in a large room with many other people who were also waiting to be escorted to one of the cubicles where they, like me, would speak with their case-worker. All of us, young and old, had a need for financial assistance from the government. At the end of the room were double doors that opened into a hallway. I could hear a voice from around the corner. It was a child’s voice. He was pleading with his mother. He kept repeating the same sentence. “I love you, mommy. I love you, mommy.” I did not hear the mother answer him. Was the child trying to console his mother? Was the mother displaying stress and sadness? (The reasons for being in that place are stressful and sad ones.)

I wanted to get up and go find the child, kneel down in front of him, and say, “I love you. God loves you.” If the situation I overheard was a sample of the child’s relationship with his mother, I cannot help but think: Where is their relationship heading? This child will probably turn from his mother one day in anger (and his anger may be expressed as depression. Once I heard a definition for depression, which spoke of it as being “anger turned inward”).

I am not suggesting we present a happy, go-lucky spirit with our children. That persona is unreal, and our children are as quick to pick up on it as they are the forlorn one. Rather, my message to mothers (and fathers) everywhere is that they can find true happiness in an authentic relationship with God through Jesus Christ. There is absolutely no substitute for this road to true happiness.

I just wish I could kneel in front of every child in the world and say, “I love you. God loves you.” However, we can each kneel in front of our children and say those words. We can live out the life of peace and a quiet joy. I know without any doubt that God the Father loves me. He bends down to me every day and says, “I love you. I love you.” My journey would have been greatly condensed if I had understood this truth earlier, but it has been a long, rambling road with very much between the lines.

To young mothers, I want to say: “Recognize God’s love, respond to it, teach it, and witness it to your children. It is the only genuine gift you can give them.” I am still a mother, and now I am a grandmother. I am real with my children and grandchildren. They have seen me cry in sadness and display justifiable anger on occasion. However, they see someone who is able to accept life’s many bumps in the road because the Father’s love has been realized. I am sure they can hear the echo of the Father’s words: “I love your mother. I love your grandmother.” We can give our children and grandchildren the freedom of not needing to bear the responsibility for our happiness; we can witness the presence in our lives of God, who is the source of our true happiness.

~A.R. (Alice) Cecil

p.s. (I recommend a book by Martyn Lloyd-Jones with the title: True Happiness.)

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Light Shining into the Darkness

08 Thursday Aug 2013

Posted by Catherine Lawton in challenges of motherhood, childhood memories, emotional needs, grief and loss, the healing journey, when tragedy hits

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

authentic relationship, Books, Courage to be honest, Death, Emotional and spiritual healing, future hope, Mother, mother and daughter, relationships

Gadly Plain view

In relationships between husband and wife, father and daughter, mother and child, it can come as a shock to realize that—though we love and are loved—though we share a bond that unites us—we are each of us separate, individual, sometimes even, painfully, alone. Most of the time we seek and find comfort and consolation in the knowledge that the other is there, or will be there, and we aren’t alone. But if you have ever lost a close loved one to death then you know the feeling of finality, separation, other-ness, of no-more-ness that can choke the consolation out of your being.

This feeling is described well in the new novel, Gadly Plain by J. Michael Dew. The 12-year-old girl named Spring-baby loses her father to death and emotionally she falls into a chasm of sadness that “bullies her, keeps her wilted, sober.” At least she shares grief with her mother. But then her mother abandons her (because “Mom needs time for Mom”).

When the author was nine years old his own father got sick and died. The story of Gadly Plain is his artistic expression of his own inexplicable trauma and the answers he found after many years of searching for meaning in the whole experience of human history, personal life and death.

Mr. Dew is a believer and the creative vision he shares in this imaginative story is honest about human weakness and suffering, but rooted in truth and hope. The book begins with a quote: “I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse whose rider is called Faithful and True” (Rev. 19:11).

The story itself is as earthy as a body in a casket, a girl in a tree, a donkey in a pasture, hay in a barn, an old lady smoking in a bathroom, a young woman driving aimlessly across the countryside, and a faithful farm hand giving a reassuring hug.

I challenge you, as a mother or a daughter, to face your own aloneness, watch and listen for the messengers the Lord of hope may be sending to you; and to help you do that, read the book Gadly Plain: A Novel.

098189299X

~Catherine Lawton

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A Match Made in Heaven

21 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by ardisanelson in encouraging each other, generations coming together, the healing journey

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

authentic relationship, friendship, relationships

Sanctuary of A Angustia, Betanzos, Galicia (Spain)

When I submitted the manuscript for “Walking My Mother Home,” I knew that the story between me, Rosa and Pedro, my Spanish family, was far from over. The healing I received when my mother passed away created a beautiful bond between Rosa and I that will last the rest of my life. What is so unique about this relationship is that Rosa and I don’t speak the same language, we live 5,300 miles apart, and we have never met. But that is about to change.

Next week, almost three years to the day we welcomed Pedro into our home that first summer, I will step on Spanish soil and meet Rosa, my kindred spirit and sister in Christ. It will be the beginning of the trip of a lifetime for me—six weeks in Spain.

Over the past two years, since Pedro was last in our home, Rosa and I have continued to communicate via email and online translators. We have both looked forward to the day when we’ll meet in person. Rosa has been learning English to facilitate our communications. I have been writing and blogging more about this story and our relationship across the miles.

One of the key pieces of the story that materialized shortly after my mother died was the role that Pedro’s music played in our relationship. As I mentioned in “Walking My Mother Home,” Pedro played the piano while he was in our home. I also mentioned that my oldest son was a gifted pianist. This is significant because Pedro was placed in our home precisely because his musical interest matched with my two sons’ musical abilities. It was a match made in heaven.

Pedro played the piano every day he was in our home. My son played Beethoven, Chopin and other classical composers’ music. Pedro was interested in cinema and played American movie soundtracks to films like “The Sound of Music” and “The Sting.” I didn’t know it at the time, but interspersed with his music, he played a few of his own compositions.

A few months after Pedro returned to Spain, he sent our family a song he composed and dedicated to us: “Seattle”. This song, and others he started to send me, were salve to my aching heart as I grieved over the death of my mother. His music has become a staple of my life as he writes songs that mark the special occasions in our lives—my own personal soundtrack so to speak.

One thing led to another and I soon found myself partnering with this musical protégé. Our joint love for music soon developed into my becoming Pedro’s music manager, the creation of a professional CD of his music, and worldwide exposure on iTunes and other online music sites. That exposure paid off a few months ago when Pedro’s music was noticed by a Spanish film production company. The trailer to Pedro’s debut movie score was released earlier this month. None of this movie business was even a possibility when I booked my flights to Spain, but now in God’s perfect timing, I will be in Spain for the release of his short film, “Thirst for Love”, in July.

The focus of my trip from the start was meeting Rosa and being able to connect with her one-on-one about our mutual experience of losing our mothers—from different parts of the world. I know God will honor and bless us as we take this next step of healing and support in our relationship. We will fumble through our language barrier at first, but I trust our non-verbal communication and love will override those obstacles.

Pedro spent two summers in my home immersed in American culture and language as part of a short term exchange program. In the summer of 2013, it will be my turn to be the exchange student. And I’m going to meet Rosa…. Truly a match made in heaven.

~ 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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Filling the Jar with Rocks

29 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by ardisanelson in encouraging each other, Gratitude, reach out and touch, show love by serving

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Tags

authentic relationship, Family, friendship, giving and receiving, Gratitude, life and death, relationships

 Rocks in a Jar

Ever since my “invest in people” nudge from the Lord referenced in “Walking My Mother Home,” I’ve paid more attention to those little nudges. Following that first nudge has led to dramatic changes in my life including my friendship with Rosa, Pedro’s mother, and my one-on-one investing in others who God puts on my path.

This is the story of a recent people investment that had profound results.

I was pleasantly surprised a few weeks ago when I got a call from Sandra, a new friend my husband and I met at a marriage workshop we recently attended in California. My surprise turned to sadness when I heard her brother had passed away. Sandra had dropped everything to fly to Washington State to see him before he died. On that short trip she hadn’t had time to meet with me, but would be back in town for the memorial service.

A few weeks passed and I was surprised to see that the memorial service was scheduled at the country club a mile from my house. Initially Sandra had hoped we would connect over a cup of coffee, but her time was filled with family obligations. That was perfectly understandable.

Regardless of that, I knew I would go to the memorial service. I didn’t know Sandra’s brother. I didn’t know her family. I barely knew her. Yet after an intensive weekend together in couples’ counseling sessions, we already had a heart connection. I didn’t consider not going.

After hugs on my arrival, she seated me next to a relative and bravely took her position up front with the immediate family. As the service started, I felt a nudge to record the proceedings. That isn’t totally out of character for me. My digital recorder is an indispensable tool for my writing. I didn’t really give it a second thought.

Family members read letters filled with sweet stories and memories of Sandra’s brother. The chaplain shared a story (author unknown) about sand, pebbles and rocks filling up a jar. The point of the metaphor was that the rocks are the important things in our lives—the people and things we can’t replace—and that we should make them a priority. If we fill our lives (the jar) with the unimportant things in life (the sand and pebbles) we won’t have room for the rocks. It was a fitting reflection to end the service.

When Sandra and I connected after the service, she mentioned how disappointed she was that her elderly mother couldn’t attend the service. She so wanted to have the service recorded but there were family objections to that.

“Really? That’s so sad,” I said. I felt goosebumps as I remembered I had recorded the service. I confessed my transgression to her. She was thrilled and started to cry. Sandra proceeded to tell me how anxious she had been about that for the past few weeks. My recording was answered prayer for her. It was a kiss from above and a reminder of God’s amazing love for us.

Sandra and I stole some time together on the deck of the clubhouse overlooking the golf course, basking in the warmth of the sun. We caught up on our lives, prayed for each other and reflected on how perfectly God had filled our jars on that very day with what was truly important—time together and the simple gift of following a nudge to invest in people.

What are you filling your jar with?

~ Ardis A. Nelson

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