When I Grow Up

Before we move on, it’s important to me that you understand that this post was difficult to write. Pieces of me are exposed in the body of this post. Pieces that are normally very private because I have a fear that by sharing some parts of my childhood, it will come across as a cry for sympathy. There is nothing that would affect me more. My personal standard demands that I never use my past as an excuse for mistakes I make in the future. My life is my own. My own to live, to destroy, or to build up. My choices are mine to make. I refuse to give out credit or blame to others for choices that I have made- good or bad. That being said, some events in my past have certainly led me to make choices that have shaped the woman I’m trying to become. Leaving out these pieces would be painting an incomplete picture of our story, because as we said in our very first blog, memories form the building blocks of our lives.

I’ve always known my mother was broken. Before I even knew what that meant. And it was my job to make sure she was ok. To be the level head, to be her friend, her co-conspirator, her shoulder for when the hurts of the past crept up and bubbled over. One of my earliest memories is comforting my mother.

She pulled the car over into a parking lot off of Rundberg Ln. in Austin. She couldn’t see through her tears to drive. I was scared, but I didn’t know why. The intensity of her sobs screamed ‘danger!’, ‘emergency!’ My first grade reasoning told me that if she was crying so hard, something really bad must have happened. I climbed into the front seat and found some napkins in the glove box. Handing them to her, I asked her why she was crying. The snippets I remember are of her explaining to me how everyone always leaves her. How her mother didn’t want her (my maternal grandmother drove off to start a new family leaving my 5 year old mother and her 3 siblings with relatives), her father chose a new family (my mother would spend a good part of her childhood being passed between family members and then marry at 16), and she was unwanted and unloved. So, I comforted her. Of course she was loved. I loved her. Wasn’t that enough?

I was in second grade. My step-father’s mom was visiting. There was so much yelling that one particular night. I had the covers pulled over my head in my mom’s room. The voices got closer and in an instant they filled the space around me. My mom was pleading. I peeked out and watched as he pointed with authority “NO! You will get down on your knees and apologize.” My mother was sobbing. His mother stood in the doorway. I watched my mother, tears creating dark rivers down her face, turn. She dropped to her knees. She apologized for whatever she’d done. I remember the feeling of utter disgust and thinking “Never will I EVER be like her. Never will I EVER let someone make me do that.” My heart wept as I understood as best a child can that my mom wouldn’t protect me. She couldn’t stand up for herself.

It was after Jace and Aubrie were born, that my mother’s sketchy judgment hit me in the face. She’d been trying to convince us to allow our kids to see part of my family that, though I love, I’d determined were not a healthy example for my children. “You’re too protective! So-and-so wouldn’t hurt them, it’s not like they’re dangerous! You always blow everything out of proportion!” she accused. What I kept saying, that she refused to hear was that physical harm was not what I was concerned about.  Little children have big ears. How long would it be until Jace asked me what a joint was? How long until Aubrie repeated a curse word? How young would they be when they were exposed to adult material via electronics? When would my children start to mimic their speech? No. That world was not going to be their normal.

When I started to consider the life I wanted for my children, I was able to look at the questionable instances in my life from a parent’s point of view. And I was horrified.

Sitting on a relative’s lap on a plastic chair outside a shady apartment complex while holding a box containing little baggies with white powder? Normal. When I was small (too young to remember my age) I said things that led my mother to believe someone had been inappropriate with me. Authorities were notified. Events unfolded. She couldn’t have prevented what she didn’t know, but once she knew, she certainly could have made sure I was never in the same room with that person again. As it was though, not only was I around this person for a number of years, but I was allowed to spend the night where they lived. Nothing ever happened again. What I learned from the situation though, was that when something bad happens, I cannot trust my mother to protect me. 

These two examples of situations in which my mother didn’t exercise the best judgment were normal to me. But this brand of normalcy wouldn’t touch my children. Their childhood would be soaking up the love of God, it would be resting in the comfort of their Daddy’s strong arms, it would be the gift of having a mother love them with such a consistent ferocity that they took it for granted- never realizing that it could be any other way for them. As she was leaving that day she told me, “You just think you’re better than everyone else.” My promise was, “I may not be, but my kids will. That’s what they deserve.”

I would have no way of recognizing it in my childhood, but God in His loving way was already very much at work in my life. He instilled in me a resilient spirit, a heart that refused to harden, and a hope for a different sort of future. His faithfulness overwhelms me. I believe that He allowed me to recognize the wrongness of my home-life so that later when I had a laundry list full of ‘don’ts’ and I was intentionally seeking ‘do’s’, I would be more receptive to Him. I knew with a certainty the kind of woman, wife, and mother that I didn’t want to become, and when I started looking around me for examples of women I could emulate, the Lord delivered. 

And I am thankful.