If the President were pinning Purple Hearts on adoptive and foster mamas whose daily challenge is to pull drowning Adopted and foster kids from trauma tidal waves, my Mom would be there….for she saved my life in multiple ways.
Dad would be in the front row, beaming with pride….I hope.
And, me, I’d be sitting in the back row, ticked off. How could I be happy and proud of someone I hated?
Yes, that is the ugly truth.
I hated my mom.
Oh, please forgive us, for we know not what we are doing.
Mom died suddenly at age 70, when I was only 36. Dad died 11 years later.
Then, in my seventh chapter of life, warm memories of mom surfaced within me, like an old-fashioned slide show.
These memories weren’t necessarily about her achievements, but they could have been.
Instead, they consisted of her character and unspoken influence of love…eating her delicious apple pie on the front porch , feeling her oil-drenched fingertips massage my asthmatic chest, and a car trip to a farm to pick out a kitty—Dinny Dinwit.
Quite cognizant of the changes in perspective, I searched for information about brain chemistry, etc.
Then, I wondered if I was experiencing hallucinations…really!
Little did I imagine that I was healing from adoption wounds and receiving the love mom left for me.
When I say healing, I mean that something truly miraculous happened within me. Something I couldn’t have worked out no matter how hard I tried.
It was God’s powerful move in my life.
He gets all the credit.
Sometimes, it takes a lifetime for a legacy to be discovered by the next generation, but it is never lost.
So mamas, take heart. Your legacy of love to your child won’t be forgotten.
Looking back, I declare mom to be a “Marine mom,” one of the proud, the few, the willing of heart to take whatever necessary for her child to experience love.