When God calls, we often have a preconceived notion of a booming voice full of clarity. The voice will tell us our direction, purpose, and destination with certainty.
Isn't that the way we expect a calling to go? We don't expect God to whisper or send simple gestures. We expect powerful understanding because God's voice is always evident.
So, why do I struggle with God's calling? He wants me to write. That is a certainty. Yet, I often criticize my writing. My critical voice tells me my words are strung together in meaningless, incoherent sentences. Even though I desire to pour a perpetual stream of beautiful words of hope and peace into every sentence, I often feel that is not what I achieve.
I never want my readers to walk away feeling empty and disheartened.
Yet, peace and hope often elude me. They play hide-and-seek with my thoughts. I have a bright idea; before it reaches my typing fingers, it's hidden in my brain's shadow.
Brain shadows come in many forms; sadness, anger, despair, and regret - to name a few. The shadows slip into gray-matter crevices and hide until the wee hours of the morning. Then, they slink out of hiding and snake into consciousness. Like a serpent, they strike. They spew shadowy brain-venom into the darkness causing restless wakefulness.
Often, it's the "sadness" shadow that wakes me. The shadow slips into the night, shattering my stillness. Entirely awake, I reluctantly allow sadness to reach my fingertips. The "sadness" shadow tells my fingers to type because I must shine the light on gloom before hope and peace come out of hiding.
My son's story makes me sad. I'm compelled to tell his story from a mother's perspective, yet the tragic shadow screams that I cannot tell the story from the perspective of a mother!
It shouts, "You weren't his mother!"
It's true. I wasn't Billy's "real" mother who gave birth to him. I didn't nurse him as an infant. I didn't even know him as an infant. I was his adoptive mother. I welcomed this strangely silent, petulant little boy into my home and told him I'd be his mother.
I tried to be his mother. God knows I tried. I wanted to love him as my own. I wiped his nose. I nursed him when he was sick. I bandaged his knees, sang bedtime songs, and told him stories. I poured every ounce of mothering into him that I could. Our family gave him our name, and we gave him a room to call his own and a bed to sleep in. We got him a dog. We got him a cat. One day, I drew a picture of him in our home. He was pictured with our kids and pets, two parents, and a car in the driveway. I called him a son. He was mine!
No, he wasn't. He didn't belong to me. As much as I longed for him to be my son, a part of me knew he wasn't mine and never would be. There was the part of me that saw beyond the hopeful stick-figure picture with the sun shining through the clouds. I saw the boy, but I didn't see him. I didn't know the pain behind his eyes. I didn't understand the wretchedness of his life before he crossed my threshold. I chose not to see that because I would have to face the awful truth that he was never mine, even though he called me momma.
Just now, in the quiet solitude of my office, his voice broke the stillness like he was standing right behind me, "Whatcha doin', Momma?" I even turned half, expecting to see my son grinning at me.
My tears are flowing now. God, I loved that boy!
In his heart, I think he always struggled with letting go of the mom he knew and loved before me. I never asked him about her. I never asked him to tell me, from his eight-year-old perspective, who she was. I bet there was a lot he would have told me. I bet there was a lot he wanted to say to me. Maybe he would have said that she was pretty. Perhaps he would have told me she made the best peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or called him snuggle-bunny. Maybe he would have cried, said she was mean, and didn't feed him. I don't know. I don't know because I never asked!
I wanted so much to be his mom that I blocked out the mom before, who did tuck him into bed and loved him before me. What was I afraid of? Was I scared the "real" mom would have been "more real" than me? Was I worried that she took up a place in his heart reserved for "real moms" that was under lock and key? I don't know. She was the ghost of someone who betrayed this little boy and left him broken and sad. I didn't want to know her. I didn't want to know what she did to him or why. Asking him about her would have made her real. In my mind, she was better left forgotten.
I did my son a great disservice by not allowing him to tell us about his mom and share his love and grief over losing her. I believe that I am responsible for his wanting to escape the pain.
I carry the heart burden of guilt. I'm guilty of not being the mother I should have been to my son.
The heart burden has weighed me down and crushed my spirit. I didn't even realize it until I started telling Billy's story from a mother's perspective. A mother's perspective would require one to be a mother, and I was only his second mother!
I should have accepted the second mother role – not tried to be his first and only mother.
Yet, now, I'm begging my fingers to type the words my soul has longed to hear: Not Guilty.
Not guilty would mean that my son has forgiven me. Not guilty would mean that I've forgiven myself. Not guilty would imply that God has forgiven me. I want those two words to replace the grief, the sorrow, and the heavy burden of guilt. I want peace and hope to come out of the shadows.
When my son grew up to be a man, he disconnected from us for about six years. Finally, after his daughter was born, he reached out to us, and we had a brief few years of a tenuous relationship. Something inside him wanted his child to have a better life, and he saw us as her lifeline.
Unfortunately, so many demons were tormenting him that he couldn't outrun them. He gave up everything to chase the one monster that gave him a flickering moment of peace. It didn't matter how false or fleeting that peace was; he craved it over all else. I know he struggled every day of his life. I know this because, occasionally, he'd reach out to me and beg for help. Here's what he wrote to me six months before he died:
3/9/17, 8:08 AM
I'm really trying to be a better person. I never took my addiction seriously. But I don't want to end up dead or in prison. I love you, mom, no matter how ashamed I make you and how much I disappoint our family. I still want to be a part of it. Please go with me to my NA meetings.
My response:
Please know that shame will only hurt you and destroy whatever we do have between us. As you know, it will be a long road of recovery, not "to" recovery. You will be recovering for the rest of your life. That's ok. What's not ok is us being on the sidelines while you struggle. I speak for myself. I can't speak for your dad when I say I want to attend your NA meetings with you. I'm sure your dad would like to go too. In any case, this is one way we can support you that makes sense. Trust must be earned back, but I am confident in you, Billy. I believed in you when you didn't believe in yourself. Isn't that what mothers do???
After that exchange, I wrote:
September 9, 2017, @ 5:25 PM
You know, I always want to prove people wrong. I want to tell them that you WILL respond and tell us when your next NA meeting is. I tell your dad constantly that I expect to hear from you any day now. I wonder why he doesn't believe me. Hope springs eternal, I guess. I love you, Billy.
His very last words were written to me three days before he died:
September 19, 2017
Yes ma'am. I love you too, momma.
I started this chapter by speaking about God's calling. I've learned that His calling is only sometimes noticed and often not acknowledged immediately. Sometimes, it takes hours; sometimes, it takes days, weeks, and even years. In this case, it took years. It took me reading those five words, "I love you too, momma."
Perhaps I wanted to hear: "You are my one and only momma!" I wish I could have him back to tell him it's ok to love two moms. I wish I could have him back to say that having two moms is a beautiful gift. I wish I could hold my son in my arms, comfort him, and allow that comfort to spill over into my soul. Yet, he isn't behind me. He isn't here. His ashes are all I have.
God is here, though, and He is whispering: Not Guilty. As I write this, I can feel my soul hole healing. I can feel my soul becoming whole. It will take some time.
I also know that the writing of this book is allowing me to heal. Writing allows me to step outside of my pain, shine a light on the addiction crisis in this country, and tell the stories of what it does to families and communities. No one emerges unscathed, but everyone can emerge forgiven.
