Sometimes I chuckle to myself as I am getting Mom dressed in the morning. I lean in close, with a sideways smirk on my face, and tell her (only half-jokingly) that she is my baby. She nods her head in agreement, and she can’t help but grin too, because she knows it’s true. I was her baby, and now she is mine. She’s my mother, but I am her “mom”.
I cannot pinpoint any one particular moment when I became Mom’s “mom”. I’d suppose that gradually over time Jon and I just learned to fill in the gaps that Mom’s Multiple Sclerosis carved out of our family. There was no affirmative change in roles, no declarative time in which we suddenly learned to fill the shoes of an adult; but somewhere in the hecticness of our childhood, we (Jon and I both) became Mom’s “mom,” simply because someone had to do it.
This mother-“mother” relationship flies so directly in the face of a culture where someone our age is expected to leave home and pursue adventures (career, education, travel, marriage) of their own. We are not “supposed” to be home caring for our parents yet. We were not “supposed” to have had to carry so much of the burden of family while still children.
But what I dare to claim today is that there is something strikingly beautiful and life-giving about the unique relationship that Jon and I have come to have with Mom; something that goes far beyond the surface level care that we provide for her.
In our cross-country road-trip back from my graduation in Iowa last week, my dad and I had a conversation that stuck deeply with me. He leaned back from the driver’s seat where he was sitting, and looked me in the eye.
“You do know what the best thing to ever happen to you was, right?”
And as strangely morbid as it sounds to admit it, I knew in that instant exactly what he was talking about… It was my mom. And not just my mom being the incredibly open-hearted, loving, sincere woman that she is.
The best thing that ever happened to me was the fact that Mom was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.
Yes, you read that right.
The best thing that ever happened to me, is by the world’s standards the worst thing that ever happened to my family.
And so though it is strange to say, the best gift that my Mom has ever given me (even better than the words of encouragement, her discipline, and the unconditional love that she has so freely given) is also the most painful thorn in her flesh that she must bear. The gift that she gave me was her own need. Her need to be cared for. Her need for me to be her “mom”.
I know that sounds bizarre to say; and perhaps it doesn’t make any sense to you. But it was in being forced by life’s circumstances to care for my mom that I learned compassion, empathy, and patience. And mostly importantly, it was in filling Mom’s needs that I learned to selflessly serve others.
The undeniable truth is that if Mom was never afflicted with Multiple Sclerosis—if she never needed me to be her “mom”—I wouldn’t have been stretched and bent into the young woman I am today.
And so today I am especially thankful for the woman who has not only been my mother in all the typical loving ways—but also for the humbling sacrifice she has made by allowing me to be her “mom” as well. I am thankful that even though this was a role she did not necessarily want to give up, that she chose to let God’s will be done, and to allow Him to use what looks to the world to be a pitiful situation, to shape me into who I am. What a testimony of a mother’s love and God’s faithfulness!
Happy Mother’s Day to my dear Mama who has blessed me most by letting me be her “mom” too.
God is good!
5/14/2017
Proverbs 19:21 