big white house, 4th of July, avoiding conflict

moments have brought me to the present state that I am in in a suburb of Washington DC. I am at my friends' house. Or at least the house she is staying at for now. It is this enormous white thing, with an AWESOME yard and a forest in the back yard. I like the back yard. Needless to say. there is an issue of massive avoidance of conflict (on my part). My friend and her mother decided to fight this morning, and the old thing in me that wants to run away and hide from any type of conflict rose up. I hate it. I hate yelling, I hate the sound of peoples voices when they are angry with each other, I hate that it is a mother and her 26 year old daughter that have chosen to give up the fight of deference and kindness to give into the demons inside us that makes us fallen. I hate that I heard the whole thing, and I hate it when my friend talks about it, she says her mom was screaming at her. She wasn't screaming, she was joining in just as if not more ferociously. but she has chosen not to look at that piece of her fallenness. Instead she took the road of victimhood, just as her mother was and still is doing all morning. Ah, family...the reasons are very clear as to why for a very long time I never wanted anything to do with them, or the idea of having one.

But I guess we all do that. I do it all the time. When I am just as guilty, I take on the victims side of things. What is the right way to deal? Especially when we are the children, children that may be more whole than the parent of offense. I never fought with my mom, I just didn't talk to her. I fight with my dad, but mostly because I have a lot of energy about something, or he is being ignorant, and he likes to banter as much as I do. But my mom and me, I don't remember when I ever screamed at her. I think I always felt smarter than her, superior to her, and at the same time, as though I would never add up to who she is. It is a strange dichotomy.

But in all of my time as a daughter, especially now that I am older and hopefully wiser, I feel that it is never okay to scream at your mother. I really have no idea what she has been through in her life. And even if she trys to manipulate me, I don't have to play according to her rules. I am an adult. I make up my own rules, or better yet, I hope it is the right way.

My mother is worth my time. Even if she pisses me off. She is worth me taking the time to cool down and to talk to her like an adult. Like a friend. Honesty about feelings is really hard for me, but its even harder for my mom. But I have watched her blossom into a woman who is able to articulate much more then I ever imagined her to be able to. it has been a LONG HARD road with my mom. We didn't even have a relationship until she moved to Kansas City 5 years ago, and even then, the first year, shoot two years was hell. I would come home after the nightwatch and she would just be getting up, and I would talk to her because I felt obligated to. I never wanted to. And the only thing that would come out of my mouth would be about all of the pain I was discovering in my heart about who she was and my relationship with her or my lack of relationship with her. She would just look at me angry under her placid facade and ask me why I couldn't just forgive and move on. "Because I can't mom. Because if I did I would be kidding my self and would just stuff it all like you have your whole life" I would say things like that. It really hurt her at the time, and we didn't talk a lot, but she began to discover that she had indeed been stuffing her emotions all of her life. And I watched Jesus take this womans life, who, I believed, had destroyed mine, and I watched him turn her into a mother that anyone would be proud to have. I am not ashamed of my mom. I think she is as amazing as every stranger that meets her thinks she is. But they don't know how amazing she is. They didn't know where she came from, from the lifetime of some type of abuse or another, from the shame that shaped the legs she walks on, that gave her a belief that she was worth only the shit that she got her whole life. They don't even know the half of it. I am so proud of my mother. She gives me hope for my life. That even when I get to her age I will still be able to change, because Jesus is in the business of never leaving us alone.

If you are reading this and you have recently been an asshole to your mother, go apologize, even if she started it. Take the low road, be honest, if you have as much maturity as you profess to in your own mind let her make her mistakes and have compassion on her. She doesn't have the understanding of her heart in the way you may have it of your own. The only way that any of us make lasting change is if there is truth and love. My life is a great example of that, and my mothers' an even better one. It's never too late. I'm sorry if you don't have a mother like mine who loves Jesus and who wants, in her latter years, to know him better. But pray for her anyway, and don't play by her rules. You are not bound to those rules. That is the beauty of adulthood. Just because you have familial tendencies, doesn't mean that the power of the Grace of God and his life in you cannot change it.

my prayer for you and myself is that we learn how to take the low road, and honor each other beyond what is offered. My prayer is that we lose the manipulation, and the obligation and the bending to those things, that we get out of the boat in more ways that we can even imagine. Remember, "there is no spoon", well, "there is no boat". The rules we are conviced that we are bound to are not reality. There remains a higher set of values and principles and rules by which we must continue to die to live to.

God help us.