A choice for God...

WRITE IT: In the Valley of Sheep ~ It is here David learns to depend on God. Are you here now? Do you feel unnoticed and like your assignment is not important? After reading this chapter of Limitless Life, how has your perspective changed?

Sadly I have felt for a very long time like I am unnoticed and that I have no purpose in life.  I am starting to understand that I have spent my life living in the shadow of my mother.  These past two days in addition to reading Limitless Life, I have found and been reading conversations/letters between my parents. And in this process... I have found myself questioning and learning.

You see, when I was younger, I found an old journal of my mother's.  At that point in my life reading the words she wrote changed me.  You see, my mother wrote about the fact that she wished, when I was 4 years old, that I had never been born.  It went on to inform me that she felt that it was sad that she didn't have the choice on my being born.  I was born month before Roe v. Wade.  The conversation continued down the path that my birth had forced her to stay married to my father.  And that having me, had forced her to abandon her dreams for life and the future.  And to me, it seemed like I was the biggest mistake in the world that she ever had to deal with.

I carried this fact in my heart for years.  It clouded my relationships, because I was unloved and unwanted.  It made me struggle to prove to my mother that I was worthy of her love.  And in many ways it was intensified by the fact that I could see so clearly how my brother was wanted, cherished, and loved.  And add to that the fact that it wasn't just my parents showing that, it was our whole extended family.  It made me feel that I wasn't just a mistake because I was born, but that it was also because I was a girl.  And yet I am the eldest in a long line eldest daughters, many whom are also the first borne in the line of children.

These facts that I had read have burrowed deep in my heart, and I realize they are the same thing that is being spoken in the Limitless Life.  He might share that in the words of Afraid or Addict, but in my heart they are written in the story.  And in starting to see this...  I started to be overrun with questions.  And yet how does one find the answers when the one person you could ask had just died.  

And then in the process of starting to pack and move.  I found the letters my parents wrote to each other for years as they participated in Marriage Encounter.  And while I know these letters were written to keep an open dialogue between my parents, with them both dead, I wondered if it might not hold the key to start to understand why my mother would have preferred that I never be born.

So, I opened them up and started to read.  The more I read the more I began to understand that my mother was caught in the trap of labels.  They were buried so deep in her heart that she herself felt that she was unworthy of life, love, and even God.  She was trying to prove to God that she was worthy of His love.  And the more I read, the more I began to understand what was being spoken not just in her own writings, but also in Limitless Life.  And God started to speak to me...  How could she love her daughter, when she couldn't love the life He had given her?  How could she know unconditional love, when all she had known was proving love to her parents and to God?  And without the presence of God, there is no question in my mind that her trying to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders became her failure.

I am not saying that she didn't raise me right.  Or neglected me.  I just know that as she was trying to figure out how God loved her, she focused on works and questioned faith, and in the end couldn't figure out the balance to know that she was loved by God.  And that walk alone mirrored my walk in trying to prove to her that I was worthy of her love.  And when she was looking to figure out a reason why she couldn't cherish the fact that my father loved her, she sought me out and since I was the biggest change in her life I was the easiest person to blame.

In reading, it saddens my heart because of the fact that my ability to prove myself worthy of her love, my ability to succeeded in life, all my high points... they were the reason that she felt she had worth.  And in placing her worth on her child, who being human, was bound to make mistakes...  It created a cycle that she never really could escape.  If my focus was not on her 100% of the time, she was a failure.  And it made me struggle to find my voice and focus in life.  Each action in my life determined if I was coming home to a mother who would be thankful and happy, or a mother who was a small step away from killing herself and/or walking out the door on her family.  And a mother who couldn't figure out God in her own mind, and questioned faith, works, and different churches...  It is understandable that the very reason for her to value herself, would struggle to find a purpose and feel unnoticed.

This past week has started to bring about a change in my perspective.  I am still not sure where this is all leading me, but closer to God would be my prayer.  And in some ways it is going to take some time and more love from God to feel comfortable being noticed, and to find a purpose and the trust to step out of the dysfunction that I grew up in and commit to do what God has planned for me.