Why, For Me, My Mother Went From Dearest Mommy To 'Mommie Dearest'

I don't know whether my mother was always such a troubled woman, as I came to know her to be over time. Looking back, I suspect that she was, but that I had to grow up beyond, first, my innocence, and then, my naivete, to be able to begin to recognize the signs that it seems were there all along. When I was a very little girl, I adored my mother. In that complete trust that a child often has for a parent when very young, she could do no wrong in my eyes. It would have been completely unthinkable for me, then, that she could or would ever do any deliberate harm to me in any way. But she did. I never could have thought that she would be so willing to injure my innocence in order to satisfy her sins. But she did. I wouldn't have been able to believe that she would begin to deliberately discredit me, even while I was still a small child! But she did.

I had been exposed, through no fault of my own, to her ugly truths and dark secrets, which then caused her to view me as being a perpetual threat to her reputation that she demonstrated she was much more concerned about than my well being. I saw some troubling things about my mother, behind the scenes, which completely contradicted the facade that she made sure others always saw of her. I didn't understand how she could be more concerned with what people thought of her, publicly, than whom she showed me that she was (especially toward me, specifically), in private, all of which caused me to feel continually apprehensive because I was trying to deal with all of her incongruities. One of the most frightening things about her, to me, was how manipulative she was. The strategic subtleties of that managed to really blow my mind! I couldn't have conceived of the various ways that my mother would 'set me up' in order to distress me. As my parent, I felt she should have been the primary person protecting me from the dangers surrounding, even invading, my life; not becoming one of them herself.

All these things that my mother did toward me, as her child, were extremely disturbing to me, especially since she had previously been my hero, and my source of inspiration, when I was very little. I had idolized her then, although that had turned to disillusionment due to all of this effectively dismantling my image of her. I was left to deal with this intense emotional conflict caused by my going from loving my mother devotedly and trusting her completely to loathing this woman whose apparent values I could not share or endorse, and with whom I had no real sense of security. As a mother, to a daughter, she was also the primary role model for me of what a woman was to be, physically, relationally, morally. Because of this powerful position in my life, she was the major contributor to shaping my viewpoints on virtually everything, and more often than not these impartations from her were not positive ones.

She failed me in so many important ways, which deeply affected my personal development and who I became. I know that I have never recovered from that, or from the deliberately destructive influence she wielded over my peace of mind, my body, my soul. My sanity. More than any other relationship in my life, this one was the most hurtful, doing the deepest damage to me by far, even beyond what I went through in marriage from domestic abuse. Dealing with emotionally off balance people can pull us off balance ourselves despite trying our best to cope with the things that come at us from them, forcing us to have to deal with them as they are if we're in a relationship with them. What all this with her would end up costing me, besides all the emotional damage it left me to deal with every day of my life, was any possible relationship with my own mother.

It was traumatizing for me to see the depth of the darkness my mother carried within her, the presence of which also compelled her to be more than willing to undermine me, at any cost, even while I was still a very young girl with no way to protect myself from this toxicity to my soul, or to escape it. I grew up spending most of my childhood alone in my room, in a desperate form of damage control. Besides that, this was not a household that really offered me any genuine physical affection, or opportunities for true emotional closeness, for me to be able to develop any deep relational bonds with anyone there. I was the one who spoke up about us needing these things in that home, within the family. I was the only one, seemingly, who thought that telling the truth about things would make it better, for us all. All that did, though, was place me in the unenviable position of becoming the family's scapegoat. Whatever went badly in our family somehow, strangely, got blamed on or directed at me, from then on, even when I was not there for whatever 'it' was that had occurred, at all, or had anything whatsoever to do with the situation! It was a bizarre, extremely unsettling feeling, for me.

I had been singled out and silently selected, within the family dynamic, from an early age, and was then made to pay the price, in many ways, for any and all of the family's sins. This was an absurd situation for me to be in, as well as very confusing to me, especially since I was a 'good girl'. I tried hard to avoid being directly involved in the family dysfunction, as much as possible, keeping to myself all I could due to how unhealthy it always felt to me emotionally in that home. As soon as I reached an age to be able to escape it, I did, which was when I went away to college, attending both summer sessions right after my high school graduation. Once I was finally out of that house, I dreaded ever going back into all that misery there, again. Still, I tried many times, over several decades, to find some sort of healthier foothold with my mother, which almost anything else would have been, compared to what it was actually like between us.

As I became an autonomous adult, although one who is still greatly affected by the pain and unpleasantness of these childhood memories, I have chosen not to remain in, or to engage in, any more unhealthy relationships with others, because of my being forced to, helplessly and hopelessly, both by and with my parents. My troubling upbringing thoroughly damaged both who I am and how my life has unfolded. The hostility and rejection I experienced left me feeling extremely alienated and anxiously wary with people, even as an adult interacting with other human beings. Human relationships simply do not feel like a safe place, for me. The afflicting anxiety which my childhood provoked in me also left me with lifelong OCD, as a constant reminder of my childhood emotional trauma, affecting even the most mundane daily tasks that I must do. Any hope and healing I have found has come from the steadfast Love of God, for me, personally, which has greatly counterbalanced the grief I have been subjected to by people. It has also given me the refuge, relationally, which I was left so in need of, in my life, after living through what is so innocuously called 'my childhood'. I don't believe that I would still be alive on this Earth now, or even as intact as I am, as a person, or as caring and gentle, at all, without the pervasive presence of, and this relationship with, my Loving Lord and Savior.

My Aunt Gladys was my favorite among all the extended family members, because she saw the truth and addressed it directly with me, seeing me being hurt by the situation as it was, while the other relatives all made the choice to overlook it, making it even worse for me to endure. She shared with me that she also felt deep heartache and frustration, on my behalf, as she saw me being treated that way by my mother (her sister) especially. This was a much needed reality check for me, regarding this unstable ground on which I was trying to find my footing as a girl growing up. I was immensely grateful to my aunt for her honesty with me about it! She was also the most Christlike relative that I had, giving me, by her example, a lot of my ability to trust, therefore, that God's Love for me was different than these harmful things being done to me, supposedly in the name of love, by my parents. So many people on Earth have great difficulty believing in or trusting in the Love of God for them, precisely because He is called our Father, a parental term often connected to negative views of the word due to the bad behaviors of Earthly parents. With my Aunt Gladys, I was able to experience God's Love being modeled by her in a real way, toward me, and to see it as being thankfully unlike the dysfunctional interactions that I experienced with my parents. My aunt even told me that she had so often wished she could have removed me from that situation, and made me her little girl, to give me the love that I was so lacking with my own parents. How deeply I wished she could have, too!

While it is a 'falling from grace' for parents, when their children begin to grow up, and see-- and have to come to terms with--- the fact that their parents are by no means perfect people, society in general can't seem to accept certain truths where parents are concerned. Even in the face of actual evidence to the contrary, adults especially often choose to cling tightly to these myths that all parents always love their children and only want the best for them; would never hurt them on purpose, or expose them to any danger or harm, but would give their own lives, if needed, to protect their children from danger and evil. While these are certainly 'Disneyesque' themes in fairy tales, which people often seek to instill in us, they simply don't bear up under the glaring light of day, which exposes the uglier reality for many children. You would only need to watch the TV newscasts a very short time to see the stories of what children are enduring, sometimes even to their untimely deaths from neglect or abuse, in the care of their own parents. It is a fact that almost anyone can produce a child, simply by seeking their own sexual gratification with another, but not everyone is, or should be, a parent of another human being! Especially when they are willing to destroy that child in some way, shape, or form, due to their own personal demons. There are horrifying situations, some of which are being exposed, that children are enduring around this world, often at the hands of their own parents.

I thank God to this day that my experiences with my parents weren't any worse than they were, although what I went through was more than enough to set me up for failure in significant ways. My sense of proper personal boundaries was destroyed, which has left me open to exploitation by people who see or sense that about me. My acting rightfully entitled to both have and use my own voice to protect and advocate for myself in this world (which is more than willing to victimize those unable to do so) is a constant source of struggle and anxiety for me. My confident belief that I have any real or lasting worth, or lovableness, has been severely undermined, leaving me quite emotionally crippled, even maimed, as a human being, a woman, a soul. There were many things done to me deliberately in order to punish me, to keep me in line, to keep me intimidated enough not to venture talking openly about the 'dirty little secrets' of the family (even in order for me to receive any help or comfort while going through them!), including being indirectly threatened with the withholding of love from me (which I never really felt was there in the first place, leaving me bitter, cynical, and distrustful of anything that people called 'love').

So, although it was far from the worst forms of child abuse, and likely my parents would never have been willing or able to perceive any of these things as being actual abuse of me, the signs of this devastating implosion (caused by my having no alternative, growing up, but to 'stuff' all these things deep down within me), are and have been clear not only to myself, and to Aunt Gladys (and I'm sure to some other relatives, as well, that made their choice to just look the other way), but to any counselor that has ever discussed my life, its course, and its outcomes with me. Abuse isn't always about external injuries. The worst are internal! Bruising a child's fragile self esteem, undermining their feeling of worth or lovableness, destroying their sense of personal safety, encouraging them not to use their own voice to advocate for themselves, teaching them that their silence and compliance is their only hope for receiving even the tiniest crumbs of affection they are starving for, creating hurt, confusion, anger, and rage, in even a sweet, loving child, and signaling very clearly to a child that they must allow themselves to be abused in some way, or else be rejected and cast aside, dismissively, are only a partial list of the deadly, selfish, sins done toward me by one or both of my parents. I will cover those of my father more specifically in a separate post. However, it must be said here that both of my parents' behaviors, combined, effectively destroyed me.

God's Love is clearly the ONLY reason I have survived, at all, and still been able to function, especially as a deeply caring human being, even though I still struggle daily with my underlying issues of detesting and distrusting people. These place me in constant internal conflict, since I am Called by God to love others! Also my continually vacillating sense of self worth, and my mighty struggle against my thorough conviction that, based on outcomes, I am not truly lovable by other human beings, torment me. This, although God--- Whom I love and trust COMPLETELY!--- tells me that 'I AM VERY LOVED', by Him. Sometimes, when I have tears falling down my face from yet another hurt that people have caused me, adding to my already deep heartache left me as the legacy from my family of origin, I confess to God that it's HARD sometimes to allow His Loving me to cheer me up, in the face of the pervasive lack of love shown by the other humans around me on this Earth. People oftentimes afflict me rather than bless me with their presence in my life, due to how they behave toward me, and the further harm which that causes me.

I tell God, at those times, "Well, of course YOU Love me, because You ARE Love! So, YOU don't have a CHOICE! You can't BE or DO anything ELSE and still be YOU! People have a CHOICE, though, and whenever I let them in my life, I ALWAYS REGRET IT! Once they come into my private life they carelessly CRAP ALL OVER IT, ADDING to my GRIEF. You've Called me to Love them, and I DO TRY to show them YOUR Love, because that's all I have IN me to show them. I'm relationally bankrupt, myself, at this point, due to far too many withdrawals by people and almost no deposits, as far as human love goes. I TRY REALLY HARD! But, actually, I'm to the point now in life that I CAN'T STAND HUMAN BEINGS! I don't even know how YOU stand human beings, God! You're Love, so YOU HAVE TO, I guess." 

All this struggle, conflict, anger, and heartache, which I deal with daily, to some degree, directly stems from those critical relationships with my parents, which were my first exposure to other human beings and what that was like. They taught me, by example, what family, relationships, and human beings in general were all about, and it wasn't a pretty picture. Childhood is when these concepts are first developed, then becoming mindsets that are with us for our lifetime. Counselors basically can only try to help us deal with them. Things this deeply ingrained are rarely if ever completely eradicated from the person who has been experiencing them. These are in fact sometimes referred to as being SOUL WOUNDS.

The first time (of the two) that I was raped, at age 21, by a stranger, I called my mother, sobbing, to tell her, and her response to me was simply "I have to go. My blueberry muffins are in the oven and I don't want them to burn." That was all she had to say to me about it. Ever. When I found myself pregnant, and all alone in Mississippi, having just lost both my jobs there, also, due to my extreme Morning Sickness, I called my mother. She told me over the phone to get an abortion, because I was "always bringing shame on the family", then she hung up on me. Later, when my son was about to be born, in Nebraska, she initially refused to even fly out to meet her first grandchild, saying to me angrily that she was too young for me to have gone and made her into a grandmother (she was 50). She did finally come, but by then the underlying rejection--- of me, not the baby--- had been brought into the situation, to always be a prominent part of my memories as a first time mom.

When I lived in Wilmington, North Carolina for awhile, my mother came through to visit along with her sisters (my aunts), since it was on their route home from their beach trip together. When my Aunt Jo stood by me, for a photo together, which my mom was taking of us, mom kept delaying and delaying and delaying and delaying actually snapping the photo! My aunt and I had both begun this with our camera friendly smiles intact, but as my aunt began to protest that having the bright sun directly in her eyes was harming them, and then started saying that, now, it was also giving her a headache, as well, my smile increasingly faded away, during all that, as mom just kept waiting, as if nothing was being said to her about getting on with it already! My aunt kept on asking her to snap the photo, but even so, my mom simply kept putting it off. Finally, knowing there was absolutely nothing actually preventing her from taking that picture of us, I shot my mom a look of great (and understandable) annoyance, directed at her, since my aunt had been repeatedly protesting and saying that her sun-sensitive eyes were watering and her head throbbed now due to the bright sun. This aunt was the one most needing to see clearly, without damaged eyes, since she was the one driving the car for this group!

Just when I gave my mom that scrunched up face of frustration with her, she (of course!) took that picture, right then! Knowing her as I do, I am sure she was waiting, specifically, for that glare from me, since she knows that my compassion would have moved me to be very concerned on my aunt's behalf, and the delay would therefore be upsetting to me. She didn't push the camera's button for so long because what she was actually doing was pushing mine! She delighted herself whenever she found a way to discredit me, especially with others, such as my aunts. My mom didn't hesitate to send me, and show other family members as well, copies of that photo with me wearing this mean-looking expression toward her. She had set me up, once again, in order to falsely 'document' that I was the unloving one, of the two of us, and not her.

When my only, older, brother shot himself, dying by suicide, I was far away in Nebraska and his funeral was going to take place there in North Carolina. For me to attend, I would need to fly back there to arrive in time. It was later told to me that my wealthy uncle had offered to pay for my plane fare, which he could easily afford, but that my parents told him not to bother, because they didn't want me there! I ended up having to sit it out, alone, in Nebraska, the day he was buried. However, my mother did send me one small full color photo of my dead brother, lying in his casket! I had nothing whatsoever to do with my brother's killing himself, yet my parents felt quite comfortable telling relatives that I wasn't welcome to come to my only brother's funeral! Things like these, which have been done to me throughout my lifetime by these people, have boggled my mind and shattered my emotions. I don't know how someone is ever supposed to truly recover from such treatment by their own family members. I have never been able to.

There are so many of those type of things that my mother did to me in my life, like these I just described here as merely a sampling, that I cannot even come close to putting them all into a single Blog post. Sadly, I would actually need to write a book to cover it all, and I am not emotionally up to that challenge. So, I will close this post by telling you about the very last time I was with my mother. It was our final chapter together. I had moved to her town to try to be helpful, since she was then divorced and living mostly alone (she had a boyfriend by then whom she bragged was on Viagra). She didn't have any use for me, still, and again demonstrated that she didn't want me around, so not having any other real connection to there, I decided I was done trying to find any place for me in either her life or her good graces.

I packed up my apartment, I had there, to move away again, for the last time of several tries with her, over the years, but I needed a place to shower and sleep for the one night before I left town that following morning. She said I could stay at her house for that, but she complained that I would be leaving her with used bed sheets that she would then need to strip and launder, creating extra work for her. So, I actually just laid down right on the thinly carpeted bedroom floor, using my own jacket to cover my shoulders as best I could for warmth, so as to not use the bed at all or be any trouble to her. It was very uncomfortable, but I was so exhausted from packing all day and loading my rental truck that I was still able to fall asleep that way. Even more uncomfortable for me, though, was this woman always being that dismissive of me.

That evening, when I had arrived at her house, she kept telling me, again and again, in rapid succession, that she would not even be home the next morning when I left town, because she would be at her exercise or yoga type class at the Y. It seemed very strange to me that she went out of her way to drill down on the point that she would NOT be home the next morning when I would be leaving, because she had no dementia or any issue causing her to forget that she had just repeated this to me several times! I thought then, knowing her, that she was just trying to underscore how little it meant for her that I was even there, or that I was leaving. So, the next morning, as I lay aching on that hard floor, I heard her alarm clock go off. It was the LOUDEST alarm clock I have EVER heard! It rang and rang and rang, and was getting even louder, it seemed. I expected my mother to shut it off, but thought perhaps she was sitting in her bathroom at the time and couldn't get to it.

Eventually her cat, who wasn't very friendly to me, either, came to where I was, and then walked back toward her bedroom door, as if looking for me to stop that loud noise or to help in some way. I sighed, got up from the floor, and looked in my mother's open bedroom door. There she lay, on her side, facing the door, with that alarm clock blaring at the head of her bed. She had a slight smile on her face (rather like a possum, I thought warily, from knowing her as I do). The other thing I noticed was that the sheet was totally tent like around her, smoothed with no wrinkles and only touching along her upper side, so that there was no way to check her breathing by seeing the sheet going up and down by being close to her body. The sheet was much too neat and precise, in that way, to be accidental, and as I surveyed the scene with the clock still clamoring, it looked to me like another one of her setups that she was always doing to discredit me in some way. Knowing CPR, I still had no intention of touching her myself, at all, as she had tried to assign assault to me, a couple of times previously, when I made physical contact with her. I had learned not to trust her! At all.

So, I did finally turn her alarm clock off, and then I yelled, "MOM? MOM! MOM!!!" I shouted it as loudly as I could, to which there was no response from her. So, still feeling in my gut this was another type of her traps where she would 'set me up' and then assign false motives to my actions and/or discredit me in some way, I called 911 instead. The alarm clock had gone off, for several minutes, long and LOUD, and my voice had called out to her LOUDLY, several times, but she had just laid there looking the same, on her side, with that faint possum smile on her face. Even if she WERE dead, which was the appearance and the scenario that I think she was staging, in order to see, and then discredit in some way, whatever reaction I might have had to that, I STILL was NOT going to TOUCH her AT ALL, because of my years of past experience with her pulling this kind of crap on me. Frankly, by this point, I wasn't feeling sad or upset, had she actually been deceased, as my emotional connections to this woman were so severed, for so long, because of her bad behaviors toward me, that I honestly felt indifferent regardless of whether she were alive or dead. I thought, cynically, maybe someone else in the family would just send me the complimentary color photo of her, in her casket, as she had done for me with my brother. I told 911 that I could not rouse her, and had not touched her.

Soon, I heard the ambulance siren getting closer and louder. Then, I met the 2 attendants on the front porch and escorted them into her house, toward her bedroom. ALL the LOUD COMMOTION, before this moment, with the clock, my shouting, and the siren, and she had not budged a bit. But, then, JUST as I GOT TO her bedroom door, with the EMTs, she simply IMMEDIATELY propped herself up on one elbow and smirking, said softly, "Deborah, WHAT have YOU done NOW?" She made it look as though NOTHING had gone on before this moment that they entered the room, and like I was just some over reactive hysteric. [She loved, especially, to try to make me come out looking like a crazy person, and other things, such as mean, or mad.] It was just as I had thought; it was all only another one of her 'Gotcha!' games she loved to play on me, to keep me off balance and distressed, in some No Win situation for me, with her. I wasn't even surprised. It was exactly what I expected from her. It was nothing but 'mom, as usual', toward me. I was the only family member that she ever did those type of things to. No one else. Always me. Seeing the lengths she was willing to go to to make me look bad or insane, I realized that this woman is actually the crazy one, at least when she is dealing with me. That day was it, for me. That was in 2007, and I never saw her again, nor wanted to. 

I. Was. Done.

I am not able to officially diagnose my mother's emotional ills, although my descriptions of her have caused people to usually assert that she was certainly a narcissistic person. When I Googled information on that term, I did come to agree with that assessment of her. Hence, the title of this post, paralleling her with the autobiographical movie of Joan Crawford, written by her daughter, called 'Mommie Dearest'. Christine Hammond, MS, LMHC, has an excellent Blog post online about this--- both the movie, 'Mommie Dearest', and what it is like for someone to be the daughter of a narcissistic mother, at https://pro.psychcentral.com/exhausted-woman/2017/11/mommie-dearest-daughters-of-narcissistic-mothers/. There are also many other informative sites about this, online.

It was very helpful to me to have others be able to comprehend and categorize my mother's behaviors, and her treatment of me, because one of the things she always did so well toward me was to undermine my self confidence and cause me to second guess my gut (which I now personally recommend that NO one EVER do!). This led to my being so conflicted internally that she was ALMOST able to CONVINCE me that I WAS truly the CRAZY person, in the interactions between the two of us. To protect myself, from her manipulations, I finally had to trust both my gut and the advice of counselors I have had, over the years, and sever any and all ties I had with her. When I last attempted to deal directly with her, which I just described to you here, I was in my early 50s, and she in her mid-70s. Sadly, she had only gotten worse, behaviorally, over time, in her interactions with me.

Years ago, I was selling shoes in a JCPenney mall store. Right in the middle of an extremely busy Saturday work shift, I found myself waiting on a mother and her grown daughter, overhearing the conversation between them as I fitted them with the shoes they were interested in. I personally and painfully recognized the denigrating, disparaging way with which this mother was directing every comment at her daughter, and the daughter's worn down, beleaguered, resigned responses to her mother. This conversation was the closest, of any I had ever heard anyone else engaged in, to what I had always experienced in trying to communicate with and relate to my mother. Hearing this going on, between them, and desperately wanting an answer, for myself, as to why any mother speaks to any daughter she supposedly loves in this destructive, debilitating way, I dared to blurt out to the mother directly, "Can you please tell me why it is that you are talking to your daughter in this way?" I knew most people would be shocked that I asked, intruding this way as the sales associate serving them, and would most likely decline to answer such an impertinent question as that at all. They could even make a complaint to the store management. 

I knew all this.

But I was desperate for the answer to this burning question that I had needed an answer to all my life. This woman was behaving exactly like my mother always had toward me! I had never really seen anyone else's mother treating them like this so openly, except for mine, making this a rare opportunity being presented to me. Without blinking an eye, this other mother responded to me with no hesitation at all. My blood turned cold, when I heard her answer, as I immediately recognized that she had just told me the pure, plain truth. Her doing that was a real gift to me because she had finally, fully, answered that question I had always carried, in my own heart, from the deep wound that I had due to my mother's behaving toward me exactly as this woman was behaving toward her daughter. She said, with no sign of guilt, remorse, or intention to change course, "I just want her to be as miserable as I was!". THAT was EXACTLY it! Just like from my mother, toward me. From my dearest mommy to my 'Mommie Dearest'. That woman spoke the truth of what it was! Of what it all came down to. Sometimes there just isn't going to be a positive outcome, or a happy ending. Sometimes, there just has to finally be an ending.

   

I Resurrected Some Older Writings Of Mine In Honor Of Resurrection Sunday

I recently came across some of my older writings, which I created several decades ago, that are still quite applicable to this current Season of Easter/Pascha/Resurrection Sunday. There are two of them which I will post here. The first I wrote while a freshman in college, as part of a public speaking class I took toward preparation for working in some form of Christian ministry later in life. It is an unusual eulogy, in that the Person it is speaking of was dead, but is now alive! The second one, I cannot tell exactly when I wrote it, or specifically why, but it appears to be written on a certain type of paper that I scribbled other things on during the 1980s . . . .

                                             Eulogy For Jesus Christ

     We are here to pay just tribute to a Man who came into this world and made His special contribution to Mankind, and who has now departed Earth, having accomplished this end. This Man is known to friend and foe alike as Jesus, the Messiah, though sarcastically among His enemies.
     He spent His lifetime challenging the traditional thoughts and behaviors of men, trying to rouse them from their comfortable routines and unheeding habits. Even as early as twelve years of age, He demonstrated an outspoken and provocative honesty, questioning aloud the ideas and beliefs of his elders. Jesus began to minister to His contemporaries at the age of 30, and He endeavored in this task to make the unseeing to see, the unhearing to hear, and even the unliving to live--- literally, but also figuratively as well.
     He lived and worked among us, as a Light to show us The Way, in order to to lead Mankind out of darkness and despair with His Way of Truth and Love. He gained from this an uncommon number of devoted friends, and an uncommon number of bitter enemies, during His relatively brief public ministry of three years. There were men who felt threatened by His going about upending them in their agreeable niches. We cannot ignore their opposition, in contemplating His life and labor, for it was as much due to their resolute anger toward Him as it was about His goal of gaining true Life--- for them!--- that He met and endured His fate. In time, if the scales are removed from their eyes, these men may come to see Him for Who He is, and to love Him also, for as a philosopher put it, "Learning from one's enemies is the best way toward loving them, for it makes us grateful to them."

     Jesus lived an orderly, disciplined life, deeply set in His values and beliefs; a life of a great sense of duty. He left nothing undone that He had intended to accomplish, saying even as His last hour arrived, "It is finished". He was bestowed with both honorable and dishonorable labels by others while being simultaneously praised and mocked for simply being who He is, yet He did not feel a need or a reason to prove Himself toward any end. Instead, He lived His life in such a way as to speak clearly for itself. One of Love and equal treatment of friend and foe alike. One of forgiveness toward all those who chose to wrong Him, due to their own human frailties. The many miracles attributed to Him were acts of compassion on His part, performed not for His own glory but to help Men better understand what He strove to teach them about transcending Love and Mercy for all alike. Jesus was on a mission; sent to us to complete this Master Plan on behalf of His Father. He respected His Father's Will, and honored it by His obedience, even when that was extremely difficult and stressful for Him. Even when that cost Him His very life on Earth, as a young man in His thirties.

     His closest friends turned on Him, in His time of tribulation, leaving Him to face this trial in His life virtually alone. Some of them even lied and pretended that they didn't know Him. However, He never forsook them, knowing within Himself that "There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends" [John 15:13], which He did for them!  He also chose to turn His other cheek to the mocking and abuse which He Himself suffered from some others, but that is not to say that He was not deeply angered at times by the cruel wrongdoing and cold inhumanity of which such people are capable. Even to His dying breath, Jesus forgave all those who had slighted Him in any way during His lifetime, so that even among His enemies men admitted Him to be a uniquely righteous man!
     He died, by crucifixion, in the hands of His foes--- that being a form of capital punishment, considered particularly degrading, which was also a very slow and painful process to be endured. He faced this unwarrantable ordeal with an inner quiet, which amazed even the great emperor who sentenced Him to death even though he had found no fault in Him. It transpired this way due to the Will of His Father; in order for Jesus to pay, by His own sinless life given as the needed ransom, for the sins of each and every one of us.
     God gave His best, for our worst, because of our great need, and because of His great Love. Jesus gave His all for the furthering--- the deliverance from darkness and despair!--- of the human race, that we each might discover true Life, and view that as worth aspiring to, rather than our seeking or settling for the illusory counterfeit of that. This is a contribution to His fellow Man that will live on forever! Jesus, the Messiah, lived and died for us all, out of His pure Love and concern for us and for our lives. He died for no crime against Man. He died for no sin of His own. Jesus gave His life willingly, on our behalf, to pay that price which we could never pay, for our own souls to obtain redemption. This was required by the very righteousness of the God Who created us all to be without the destruction and death which is caused by sin. Jesus' Light illuminated Truth to the world, at the center of which is the everlasting Love of God. This should be seen as a gift rather than a threat, then, by all of us alike.

     Jesus lived and He died, out of Love for us.

     And though He died--- now He lives!
     Again, and forever and ever. Amen.

     When that time came, in each of our lives, that we accepted Jesus Christ as our Savior, we committed ourselves to that relationship with the Lord. We determined to change some things about our natures, also, that had existed before this personal relationship began with Him, so that we might better share in a loving and lasting union with Him for all our lives, both here and hereafter. There are times when it is not easy to keep up our end of this relationship. There are times, in fact, when we seem to fail altogether; but we can find strength in our knowing that His Love is not conditional or superficial! We can trust in the reassurance that His Holy Spirit has been sent to dwell with and within us, and to help us in and through all things. Knowing we are loved that way, by Him, we are moved by this to do no less than pick ourselves up, again, and continue our journey to which we are destined as humans, while experiencing the ongoing discovery of what being truly loving is all about, and how better to express it, both to God and to one another.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     

I dedicate these writings from my past to Jesus, Whom I daily praise and thank for being my Savior, my Lord, my King, my HERO, and my BEST FRIEND! I also want to take this opportunity to point out to those reading this post on my Blog that these were written many years before I ever went through 'The Dark Night Of The Soul'. This is important for me to point out to you, as part of my Testimony as a Christian, because, although these reflect a knowledge of the Lord and a personal relationship with Him, they were nevertheless written from my HEAD knowledge, of Him, and not from my HEART knowledge of Him, making these sentiments rather superficial, at that time in my life, in their strength or their staying power. That all changed for me, once I truly gained HEART knowledge of my Lord and my God!

Very difficult and emotionally painful things happened in my life which ultimately shook me to the core of my beliefs and, it felt like, even deeper still than that! This caused me to go through times of questioning the very existence of God, and, even when I felt He was there, I rejected any real relationship with Him for a time because I thought I knew Him, only I didn't really, causing me to misunderstand Him at the time. I was a carnal Christian, then. One that had yet to realize that our (finite, limited viewpoint of) reality MUST ALWAYS be what bends and yields to the SOLID TRUTH of His Word, rather than the other way around, because, quite simply put, "GOD IS GOD; and we . . . are NOT!". He created everything, so it ALL belongs to HIM. Therefore He has every right to make His own regulations about it all, as He sees fit in His knowledge and wisdom. The Bible says "Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so My ways are higher than your ways, and My thoughts are higher than your thoughts." [Isaiah 55:9] Due to our finite viewpoint, limited knowledge, and lack of wisdom, without God's guidance we are often incapable of knowing for ourselves what is truly best for us in any given situation.

That being said, the strictly religious, which largely cast aside the relational aspect of God with us, since that doesn't suit their agenda (which they perpetrate in God's Name to the detriment of everyone involved, including God Himself), often turn me off and make me angry, by their trying to alienate, exclude, and punish people whom THEY decide that God is not for. GOD IS FOR EVERYONE! "God's Love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His one and only Son into the world so that we might live through Him." [1 John 4:9] His Word also says "If anyone hears My Words and doesn't follow them, I don't condemn them. I didn't come to condemn the world but to save the world." [John 12:47] The Bible says "He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." [2 Peter 3:9] Religion, in the strictest sense, can often be an enemy to God, and a barrier to us, blocking out the Light of God's Love and His deep desire to have a close, personal relationship with every one of us.

Part of my own testimony is that I pushed God away, for years, rejecting Him while crying out to Him to send me SOMEONE who would LOVE ME! When that DIDN'T HAPPEN, I turned on Him so viciously that I literally (looked up to Heaven, and) CURSED HIM TO HIS FACE! I told Him to get the '%#&@!' OUT OF MY LIFE!!! Well, He DID. . . . For THREE DAYS . . . it felt like His precious, sweet Holy Spirit had LEFT ME. I hadn't realized how MUCH of a DIFFERENCE He had MADE, by BEING in my life, until HE WAS GONE, because He'd been with me, no matter what, since I had accepted Christ as my Savior when I was a very young child. So, I had taken Him for granted, in that I really couldn't recall what life had actually felt like before Him, or without Him. . . . Until THIS time, I am telling you about here, now. . . . For  those three days, I felt like someone had PUNCHED ME IN THE GUT, and I walked around lethargically because I felt so 'deflated' inside, without Him there with me. I just couldn't imagine HOW I would even be ABLE to go on, in this way, without Him. At the time, though, I thought that He was gone for good, thinking that my cursing Him 'to His face' had been that 'one unpardonable sin' called Blasphemy Of The Holy Spirit. ["Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven." Matthew 12:31]

Then, after three days, I was alone in my apartment, when I suddenly felt that sweet, gentle Presence of the Holy Spirit--- BACK!!! I turned toward the front entry hall of my apartment, where I sensed this Energy was hovering, seemingly waiting to be invited in by me once again; to be welcomed back by me, specifically, because of my Free Will to have to make these decisions in my life. I stood there, at first, just a few feet away, and said to Him, then, "Holy Spirit, I am SO GLAD that YOU'RE BACK! I NEVER thought I would EVER have You in my life, again, after how badly I treated You, and after I sent You away from me." With my tears flowing down my face, I said, "I cannot promise You that I will never lose my temper or get frustrated with my life, again, but I CAN PROMISE YOU that I will NEVER talk to You that way EVER again!" Then, I moved toward the location of that unique Energy, where He was still waiting, invisibly yet perceptibly, for my verbal invitation, having been banished by me just days before this. God loves us and wants us, but He also will never force Himself on us, because He chose to give us our Free Will. He didn't want robots; programmed machines! He wanted to be loved back by someone, in return, who had the true freedom to choose to love Him back. If you think about it, love is such a beautiful thing precisely because this precious gift between two is given to each other by choice, not because it is required of them or forced on them. It is freely given; freely received. Anything else, regardless of what it may be called, is not truly genuine love.

He likely returned to my apartment because God, knowing all, including our heart of hearts, saw and knew that I was MISERABLE WITHOUT HIM, for those three long days, and knew that I regretted ever having rejected Him. Because I had done that, in such an ugly and horrible way, I truly didn't think He would ever come back to me. A human most likely wouldn't have, after that kind of behavior by me toward them. I moved toward where I sensed the hovering, hesitating Energy, and embraced it, the two of us merging together again, as the Bible teaches that our body is the temple of the Lord. ["Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, Who is in you, Whom you have received from God? You are not your own" 1 Corinthians 6:19] I welcomed Him HOME, and gave Him ALL MY LOVE, that day. As unholy as it sounds, I didn't regret all that had happened, though, only because it was DUE to it that I saw and realized how HE LOVED ME COMPLETELY, to come back to me at all, and that proved to me that HE was actually that Love I had wanted, and waited for, my whole life!

I didn't just LOVE Him, from then on; I also 'FELL IN LOVE WITH' HIM. He is my JOY, my LIFE, my EVERYTHING; my ALL IN ALL! I have been SO HAPPY with Him all these years since! The Bible says that "I the Lord will be your Husband'' [Isaiah 54:5], and He HAS BEEN that for me! He is all that I ever dreamed of, too! He is always truthful with me; He loves me unconditionally; He never abuses me, or leaves me, or forsakes me. He always has my best interests at heart. He knows everything and everyone, so I TRUST HIM COMPLETELY in ALL things at ALL times as I seek His wisdom. That brings me such a sense of peace and protection, security and safety.

I had to LOSE my relationship with God, for three miserable days, to realize how AWFUL and UNLIVABLE life was like, WITHOUT Him! That's what it took, with me. No one would have kept loving me, or has, like HE DID! I had treated Him very badly by taking out my frustrations on Him like I did, on that day. I was very upset at the time, and I REALLY LET HIM HAVE IT, verbally. I was so AMAZED ("Amazing GRACE, how SWEET the sound!") that He even still WANTED to BE WITH ME after that. That's when I realized how BLIND I had been: that the VERY LOVE I'd wanted to find ALL MY LIFE was HIM, with me, always, and FOREVER!

My Life Reflections Through My Poetry

                  Fate

Fate undermines my foothold
Like a quake beneath the ground,
Wrecking all my best-laid plans
Without a single sound.
I fall, and watch it happening;
So tired of asking "Why?".
Feeling wretched, all the more,
For idly sitting by.
After years of standing up,
Once all was ruined there,
I sit, and holding back the tears,
Pretend that I don't care.
My whole plan seems so pointless,
Like castles built on sand.
You'd think that I could manage
Inspiring love in Man.

           - Deborah Robinson Gray
             October 13, 1980


               untitled

The breeze chills my body,
And these thoughts sting my soul---
I may never have answers;
I may never feel whole.
I may never be loved---
not feel lonely---
again.
(I may never hold to me
More than this damn pen!)
God must not have planted
His flowering seeds
In my life; there is nothing
That's growing but deep, unmet needs.
I prayerfully ponder,
A Spring evening in session,
With only a rhyme, and some time, and obsession.
The clay of my body
Calls out to the clay.
The night of my heartache 
Cries out for its day!
My halfness-of-wholeness
Has caused me to fall,
And still no one answers
My soul's piercing call.

     - Debby Robinson Carlin
       May 16, 1984


       When I Find Your Face

At another time, in another place,
I just might find your face,
And then I'll know what I'm searching for
Has been there after all!
If you'll love me back, like I need to be,
Your love will set me free!
And you and I can unite our lives
In two-part harmony.
I've got love to give,
I've stored up inside;
It's left no room for pride.
So when I know
I've found you at last,
I'll give you all my love.
Though a solo now,
I still sing my song
Of hope to keep me strong,
Until I find
Your sweet face at last,
And know I'm finally home!

   - Deborah Robinson Gray
     December 4, 1978


          untitled lyrics

In the quiet of the evening
I find myself into a mood;
So I put soft music on the stereo
And listen to its messages, and brood.

Chorus:
Love songs, peace songs, dream songs; sweet.
My heart knows that wanting, but knows not their feel.
Love, peace, and dreams are all such lovely things,
But seem a figment of my mind; unfindable, unreal.

I look for love among the crowds,
I search for peace between the wars,
I see my sweetest dreams come true-- through sleeping eyes.
Life offers me no keys that fit its doors.

I'll keep searching for life's joys;
'Tomorrow is another day';
'It's always darkest just before the dawn';
'Things must look up'; anyway, that's what 'they' say.

                                 - Deborah Robinson Gray
                                   August 1, 1976



     a section of an untitled poem

Drown my sorrows, get a headache;
Take a lover, lose my heart;
Guess I just can't stand the pain in
Either finishes or starts.
Without first healing, can't find loving;
Without the loving, I can't heal.
Having doubts deep down within me
There'll ever be a love that's real.

            - Debby Robinson Carlin            
              July 24, 1984


I'm Not Smart Enough . . . For THIS World

                   Free Verse

I'm not smart enough for THIS world . . . .
I'm not able to know where I stand
In relationships with people.
I can't seem to determine my worth
to others---
I don't know my value in this system
Of player haters, spin doctors, and 
Superficial socializers.
I don't know if I have anything to offer
That's of worth to the self-occupied
Occupants of this planet,
Who may not even allow my efforts
A passing thought.
Even if my attempt was to show them
God's Love, through me---
Fumbling and imperfect and marred
As I do that---
It's really all I have to give anyone . . . .
I'm smart enough to know that
That's all I've got.

                - Deborah Robinson
                  April 5, 2016


When I reconnected with my son online, I was thinking it would be really fun to collaborate together on a song, since I write lyrics sometimes, and he is a musician! He stays way too busy to have time for that, though, I think. . . . This is just the one verse of a lyric I had started to write, specifically with that hope, thinking that he and I could finish it together, by internet, and make it into something good!

                         That Love Was A Promise

Sometimes the journey leads our paths to different places;
We find ourselves apart and all we see are other faces.
Yet the bond that's ours alone can't be denied.
That love was a promise!
                                                - Deb Robinson 
                                                  February 2019


Most of these writings were transcribed here, for this post, from the various tattered pieces of paper on which I had originally created them years ago; some of these go back decades. I added this amateur anthology here on the Blog as part of the life reflections from my soul. They reveal what was in my heart over the course of time, throughout my journey so far, and certainly support the truth of what I have already been describing about my life in my previous Blog posts! There has been this singular thread running through the fabric of my life. This constant theme that, while "I have found the One Whom my soul loves" (Song Of Solomon 3:4), in my personal relationship with God (which is the single greatest blessing of my--- eternal--- life), as a human being living on this Earth I have been bedeviled by chronic lack of love from my fellow humans. Also very telling is the fact that the second greatest blessing for me, relationally, had been the nearly 20 wonderful, fun, loving years I had living life with my pet Cockatiel, CeeBee, who died in 2011. Third place is the highest ranking any human relationships have ever attained, for me. Those that have been included have largely been special friends and neighbors, rather than family members, throughout the years, although there is an aunt and uncle about whom I often said to God, wistfully, that I wished they had been my parents, because they were so godly, decent, loving, supportive, and honest--- all things which I value greatly, among the full range of possible human attributes.   
   

"If You Love Someone, Set Them Free . . . "

[Note: I cannot make these stories from my life nice and neat (or, rather, whitewashed and sweet) in order to make them more palatable, or easier to cope with, for anyone reading them. When the truth is watered-down, it stops being the truth! I have lived through all these things. It is my story. It is what it is. I can only produce these posts as the inspiration needed to cover these particular topics shows up to help me deal directly with their subject matter. (It is not easy to do!) Therefore, each post is more like part of a jigsaw puzzle. At some point, as I continue to provide the pieces of that here, you should be able to at least get a sense of the whole picture, for yourself. I have already sat here typing a previous post through an anxiety attack, which I am not prone to, struggling to breathe, as I tackled some of the darker experiences that I have been through. [This refers to my March 6, 2019 post titled 'Two Memories I Have From My Marriages.'] There are certainly more of those to come, both here and in life as well, simply because of living on this planet. We suffer from the pervasive consequences of Original Sin, the sins of others, and our own sin, and we must acknowledge all of that, at some point. This Blog is my mosaic. I am creating it by taking it one piece at a time, as I am able to do so.]

In mid-November of 1981, I delivered my son, after about 27 hours of labor which had begun just as I was climbing into bed exhausted at the end of a day in which I hadn't even been able to take a nap. Sleep was difficult to come by, being nine months pregnant and physically uncomfortable from that, so I was especially tired. My water broke, right then, starting my labor. So, instead of getting to lie down and sleep, or at least try to get some rest, I went and stood in the bathtub while all of that trickled down my legs, as I had never gone through any of this before to be sure what to do. At the hospital, there were times that my contractions, monitored by the strap across my belly, went past its ability to measure their intensity! I did do some things from my Lamaze class training, such as using a focal point to concentrate somewhere outside of my body (where my pain was), and certain breathing techniques; but labor was still a long and arduous process. The nurses called my ob-gyn to request more help for me through my IV, but that could only go so far. The rest of the way, I was on my own.

It really felt like that, too, since my husband was more chatty with the nurses than bedside to support me. This was nothing new to me, with him. One of the tougher things, besides my extreme physical exhaustion from before and during all this, was not being allowed to eat anything during the entire labor--- except ice chips from a Styrofoam cup--- while the nurses nurtured my husband's needs by bringing in trays of food for him. The enticing aromas wafted over to my hospital bed, increasing my hunger and my awareness that my own basic needs were on hold, for the duration of which I had no idea then. Eventually, I got grouchier, and my outcries from the contractions got louder. Losing my patience with everyone around me who wasn't in this pain, I verbally threw my husband out of my hospital room for awhile by telling the nurses to take him--- and his food trays they brought him!--- OUT of my sight and smell.

My doctor hadn't initially been alarmed that I was in labor for such a long time. This can happen especially with first time mothers who have never gone through the vaginal stretching before that is needed for complete dilation to birth a baby. But I was also a fairly uptight patient during my pregnancy, for several reasons, so for awhile the doctor thought that was contributing to my longer labor. In general, I had never wanted to have kids. It was nothing personal toward this baby boy within me that was trying his best to enter the world now and take his place in it. From the moment he was conceived I 'just knew' he was there, and that God meant for him to be; that he was going to be born and that I would fight for him to be, which I had to do at first. I talked to him, inside me, since he was no more than a speck of tissue, telling him these things about God's having a plan and purpose for his life! Despite this, though, the fact is I have always been extremely medically squeamish! This was a contributing factor to my 'never wanting kids' in general, because of all the lab sticks and poking and prodding of my body. Yikes! Add the labor; and then the delivery of this human being coming out of my vaginal opening. Yet, here I was. Following God's Plan. I definitely wasn't someone that would ever intentionally get pregnant. It had also really complicated an already heartbreaking situation for me. I had my hands full of heartbreak, at the time. It was probably the last thing I needed, when it happened. I did end up with his father marrying me, after some debate and discussion between us, in order for us to obtain the medical benefits to cover my pregnancy and the birth of his baby, since my husband was an Air Force officer. I had lost both of my (part-time) jobs, at the same time, due to the awful nausea from Morning Sickness, and was left unable to survive on my own, given my condition. Regarding our marriage, although we had the needed medical care for the situation, as a result, it was as obvious as his baby was, growing bigger within me, that this man did not want me or our marriage. So, all these things, and more, contributed to my pregnancy being very stressful for me, making it much more difficult, and certainly far less than ideal; especially for me being a first time mom.

The staff finally wheeled me down to x-ray after more than 24 hours of labor, to see why this baby still was not coming out, as by this time the main medical concern had switched to the risk of fetal distress. They discovered that he was turned, not breech but backward! (My labor likely would have been much shorter had they done this sooner, but it is what it is.) As soon as they wheeled me back to the OB/GYN floor, the doctor took his gloved hand and during my next few contractions used those already awful moments to grasp the top of the baby's head, within me, and gradually turn the baby around so he would be completely in Birth Position. Then, the doctor cut me open with a scalpel from my vaginal opening through my anus, called a 'Fourth Degree Episiotomy' (the fourth degree being the maximum possible cutting of this flesh), so that my healthy baby boy (around 8 1/2 pounds I believe) would soon be able to get some rest himself after all this, along with his exhausted mom. With just a few pushes from me, then, out he came! It isn't exactly the cutest analogy made about a baby's birth, but (especially since my rectum was also cut open, to accommodate his size) it felt just like how it feels when suffering from severe constipation and then very painfully, but with equivalent relief, I can finally have a BM. That's what he felt like, finally sliding out of me--- just like when painful straining is followed by the great relief of finally pushing out a REALLY BIG piece of POOP! Then, I still had to get stitches down there, to separate my two openings from one another again, before I was finally sent to a patient room to sleep; just for a few hours though, because my doctor woke me then to examine me. That's when my breast milk first began, just as I sat up in bed, literally squirting out from my breasts! I breast fed my baby, for the extra health benefits for him from that. The hospital sitz baths helped my stitched up bottom ALOT. (I took all of those the nurses offered me. Aaaaah!) So, through a great deal of effort by me, my sweet baby boy had arrived! No matter what I wasn't able to be for my son, in his life, much of which must be another story for another time, I am the one who carried him in my womb, and then birthed him into this world. No matter what, that makes me his actual mother, by matter of fact. All I ever did for him, from carrying him to everything else I did on his behalf, was out of my great love for him. Ultimately, though, that was also to include my choosing to let go of him.

My marriage to his father didn't gain any traction during my pregnancy. In fact, what we did have together, almost since our beginning, which was a great, nonstop, sexual relationship, primarily, was killed off, ironically, by complications arising from the new life I was carrying within me as a result of that. At one of my earliest doctor exams, with my husband there with me, my ob-gyn noticed that I had suddenly started growing some warts in my vaginal area, and he cautioned that we must abstain from sex through the rest of my pregnancy, to avoid it spreading and possibly complicating things for the baby as well. The doctor's concerns were that they could enlarge or multiply, and said that any treatment for them would have to wait until after delivery. He told us that if they would enlarge, they could even complicate the delivery of the baby. Apparently they came from a common virus that doesn't always produce them, but the change in vaginal discharge due to pregnancy can cause them to appear solely during that time. He checked my husband as well, while we were there, and saw no sign of them. I had not been with any other man since I had first met my husband, to that present day. The doctor concluded that the pregnancy had most likely caused this breakout, and that therefore it would clear up once I was no longer carrying the baby. That is exactly what happened! I have never had them since. (Only during that pregnancy. >sigh!< Not only does a fetus take over your entire body, in ways, during pregnancy, but you can also lose the pleasurable use of your own vagina, if something like this happens, because IT is now the baby's birth canal and as such must be protected for that use, which finally occurs once you get through the rest of the entire nine months' toll on the body.) This development, of doctor-directed celibacy, for us, didn't help things between my husband and I, at all, since great sex was our strongest bond with one another. Our relationship continued going nowhere but downhill; and, just before I had the baby, I realized that this marriage was never going to truly be that, for us. We remained together a short time after bringing our boy home from the hospital, but it was not a good situation for any of us, and I did decide to divorce him. I was raised in an unhappy home, in the midst of a long-troubled marriage between my parents, which greatly impacted me and my childhood in several negative ways. I did not want that to be the legacy for my son. At all.

Not right away, but soon, when my baby was still only a toddler, I also decided to transfer my custody of him to his father, after he met a wonderful woman which he would marry, whom I knew right away was a true gift from God as a (step-)mother for my son. I did this so that this precious little boy would have a loving, stable, two-parent home; something I did not think I would ever be able to give him, myself. That will be another story for another time here. While emotionally this decision nearly killed me, and, there were people around the situation that simply didn't understand it, and therefore criticized me and accused me of not loving my son as a mother should, I did make what was the best possible choice I could for my son and his life. It wasn't about me! Then, to help me survive on my own, alone, my son's father paid for a 6-week Nursing Assistant certification program at the local community college, in order for me to have a stronger skill set for earning a living for myself. Following that, I was mostly, but not completely, out of the picture, for that newly-formed family to go on with their lives, and me with mine, as I didn't want my son to be emotionally torn between the two. I had helped with bonding my son to his new mother, so that he wouldn't be traumatized by my exit as that. . . . I was only 26 years old, at this time. As hard and heartbreaking as all this was for me, my focus was only on wanting the very best life for my son. While I thought I was making the best decision I could, on his behalf, at the time, life gives us no guarantees about anything. As it turns out, it was a wonderful life for my son, in that situation, and all that I had hoped it would be, for him! Also, I was so glad, during my later relationships (as I kept trying, for awhile, to find someone who could love me), that my son hadn't even known these men, or had them as bad influences or role models in his childhood home, as step-fathers. They wouldn't have been good examples, for him. Especially when I was going through so much intense domestic abuse, with my last husband, I often thought to myself, as I would cringe and cower from this man, that I was so grateful my son was never put into any kind of situation like that, in his life. I was loving my son, every day, through my letting him go, so he could live his BEST life!

What I did more than anything else was place my little boy in God's hands, tearfully and prayerfully asking Him to somehow seal the special relationship we had with one another while we were together as mother and son. I hoped that it could somehow survive all our years apart, while my son grew up in other places, all around the country and the world, as part of a military family. That included a wonderful 'other mother' for him who was there for all of his everyday and special moments as he was growing up. I had dreamed that someday, when he became a man, he may still have room in his heart for me, or want a relationship of some sort with me, again. The two of us had been extremely close, when I had him with me, originally, and although he was very young then, it was clear that he loved me deeply at that time, as I also loved him with all my heart! It all really came down to that risk I took (in order for him to have his best chance for a great life, regardless of what happened with me as a result of that), to place him in another mother's arms, in a two-parent home with his father, many miles and years away from me. It would test our relationship by the truth summed up in Richard Bach's famous quote: "If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they're yours; if they don't they never were". I haven't set eyes on my son since he was about 9 years old, largely because they didn't live anywhere near me, although I was sent some milestone photographs of him as he grew up, by his other mother who actually raised him. She is a truly wonderful woman, and is truthfully the best human being that I think I have ever known! That's a fact.

Through the blessing of the internet, my son and I have recently begun emailing one another! He is grown now, married to a lovely young woman whom I have never met, and busy 'living his dream', as he puts things. I am so very happy for him! As for me, I stay busy with life, too. I'm well aware, at age 63, that mine is shorter than I would like it to be, from now on out, for me to find enough time to express and explore those things about myself which are still blooming and blossoming, within me, even at this stage in my life! I hold whatever may or may not come to be, with my son, with an open hand. I have told him not to feel any stress or pressure to get together, especially as he lives in another country around 8,500 miles away! I have told him that we can always find time in Heaven, in Eternity, to visit together, someday, if he wants to and it comes to that. I feel reasonably hopeful that we can have a good relationship with one another now, if only by email, even though he does not need me to be his mother, anymore, in his heart. He is now a grown man, and the mother he loves is understandably the woman who raised him. He sent me a great email that caught me up on his life, in a beautifully written, detailed narrative which was such a gift, to me, from him! He took the time from his very busy life to do that--- FOR ME! I saw, and felt, that compassion and care toward me from him, and was deeply grateful to him for that. The only difficult part for me, so far, of dealing with our new (email) relationship, after our many years apart, was the reality check that my heart received at the close of one of these new emails to me. He signed off with "regards" to me, before his name. OUCH! Knowing he is factually, genetically, my child, led me to HOPE for him to find it in his heart to "love" me, unrealistic as that may be at this point. I hope he can and will find room in his heart for me, now, and actually be able to love me again, but I am not counting on it. I'm not trying to replace anyone in his life, either. I replaced myself in his life, many years ago, so he could have and live his best life! That was truly my heart for him, when I made that devastating decision. Maybe God will whisper to his heart, some day, reminding him that there was a time when it was just he and I together, at first. As close and loving as we were toward one another, though, I then taught him, gently and lovingly, to let go of me, so he could fully embrace his new mother, and a much better future with her and his father. I don't know if he can love me now. Only God knows, and only time will tell. I felt a barrier, of sorts, behind his word "regards", though; maybe that's just because I have a mother's heart toward my son.