This is not Mother’s Day, but …
One day last week, while driving my son home, I mentioned something about a girl being pretty, and he quickly responded, “well if I thought she was, I wouldn’t tell you because you would take it too far and use it against me.”
And here it was, in one moment of a light-hearted conversation I was humbled … to tears. Now, normally I would have held it in, and my child would never know how his (or her) words ripped at my mother heart. This particular day, though, his words pulled the cork holding the waiting rapids back behind the dam, and all watery hell broke loose.
The salt water cascaded from my eyes, and in no time at all, they were leaking down past my neck … face forward, blurry eyes trying to focus on the road ahead.
Silence.
Then I could feel it … the shocked stare of the one whose quickly chosen words made the fatal blow.
As I put the van in park, the man-boy hand touched my arm …
“Mom, go ahead. You can say it.”
“Say what?” I just didn’t know what my lines were to be.
“Tell me that I was wrong to say that.”
“No. You are not a child, I cannot tell you what to say. But … your words, they hurt. They hurt so much, because … (ugly sob) because I love you kids more than (another ugly sob) more than anything, and if what you say is true, then I have blown my life’s calling, and I have hurt you more than your words have hurt me, and (ugly sob) and that is just not something I can bear knowing that I have done to you.”
The man-boy reached his arms around me, forcing my head onto his shoulders … as has been done so often, but in reverse.
“Mom, I didn’t mean it. I just didn’t think …”
And there, in a moment … my ‘baby’ was speaking words of comfort, words of love, words of strength into the momma who lives to do the same to him, for him … and who, like my son, says words I don’t really mean … and they have brought sadness, and sorrow and tears.
It might not have been a silly conversation about a girl. It might not have been with a son. It might not have been in the van …
but all moms could tell similar stories of hurtful words from their kids, and hurtful words spoken to their kids. We all have times when we “just didn’t think …”
Later I saw this video.
I hope that it speaks to you, encourages you, absorbs some of the guilt of inadequacies, and wipes the tears.
This is not Mother’s Day …
but this is for you, moms.
We women (remember, I cannot speak for ANY male, being female and all), hear voices.
It is said that it takes anywhere from five positive things to cancel one negative to two positive things to cancel that same negative. No matter what the stat is, it takes more positive messages than negative to break even.
itsawonderfilledlife 