Of course God was not trying to punish me or be mean. He wanted my relationships with my parents to bring healing for all of us. Only my dad got it. If only my mom could have been more like my dad. Of course my mom and brother seem to think I had my father wrapped around my little finger which makes no sense to me.
When I say I stood up to my mother I guess I just mean we argued and I did not back down. Not really the same thing.
I have to share something that happened when I was in 6th grade. I made a teacher cry. Our teacher was chastising the class for being extra rowdy when we were actually being normal. She had false expectations for various reasons. When she gave time for the class to respond to what she was complaining about I raised my hand and confronted her with her false expectations. It convicted her, she cried, apologized and changed.
No one could have been more shocked than me. How was I to know this was a gift I have been given to silence some critics and tame some out of control relationships and behaviors??? No body told me. (This and these are the other reasons I am still upset about my childhood.) Yeah I know join the club.
Ok back to the tale...
I felt trapped back at home with no end in sight. One day my mother was passing me in a walk way around our house. Something triggered her and she just UNLEASHED at me:
"WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME? WHY DO YOU DISRESPECT ME? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?"
I had no idea what she was referring to. I thought Lord you need to help her see clearly. I have done nothing to her. I just live here and it annoys her. It had been a really shocking out burst. She hadn't yelled at me since I was a child and I had no idea why she was taking things personally that I was doing or not doing.
Looking back I guess I should have dealt with that in the moment or some time after but I was just not in the right head space. I figured if she was so off base there was nothing I could say to answer her questions. Further I felt if she really wanted to deal with something it would be brought up in a conversation not by screaming unexpectedly.
We trudged on. I tried to live my life as best as I could. Then my dad died early in 2006. It was a shock to us all. Six months later my mom took my daughter and I to Florida on vacation with her. She also gave me her old car and bought a new one.
Then she got laid off from her job in the fall. She told me I would need to start helping out financially. I took that right to God since my job with the friend had stopped paying and then stopped all together. The only kind of work I had done in my daughters life time had been child care or part time evening office work. The office work was legislatively seasonal starting in December at the earliest so that was out.
Almost as soon as I prayed a child care offer came up through the friend I had just worked with. I was excited to tell my mother our prayers were about to be answered. Her face soured and she said she did not want her house used as a day care. The job never came through. Soon she gave me a 30 day notice.
When it was over she shuffled me out of her/my home. She was nice enough to call a friend to help us. Together we moved all my things into a larger storage unit which she paid for.
I was alone and off on my own again. I called a friend in Davis. He had just lost his mother to cancer and inherited her home in El Macero a Davis suberb. The house has an indoor pool and jacuzzi with a dry and wet bar off the kitchen.... A nice place to spend a rent free winter while in crisis.
God was trying to tell me something.
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