The Imperfections of a Mother.

“Gold cannot be pure, and people cannot be perfect.” – Chinese Proverb

 

Imperfection #153,844, When your child posts on his Twitter acct "mommy and daddy are fighting"

I grew up with "Anita, what happens under our roof stays under our roof."
"You don't put your business out on the street."

I grew up with secrets that haunt me today. "You are as sick as your secrets." has become my motto.

I do not need a designated day to recollect memories of my mother. I use my memories to heal and to encourage others.
My mother had so many imperfections. We really did hide everything. We were afraid to talk about the dysfunction let alone even think about it.
Then the older I got the more dysfunctional I got, the more I had to hide. I was collecting my own secrets.

MOM.
God, I loved that woman. She was so diseased, she did horrible things, she hurt all three of us children the way no mother should. The bottle was her master. The bottle of pills and the bottle of booze.
God always gave me compassion. I never quit forgiving her. She was beautiful and broken. I had to learn to look at her heart. Her heart just wanted LOVE. Isn't that what we all really want?
She taught me so much.
Often times we get so buried in bitterness and resentments that we are controlled by it. We allow our canvas to be painted by unforgivness and lose the sight of the rest of the picure.

10 Things my Mom taught me:

1. Always give 2nd chances, and third and fourth......She would go to the moon and back for her enemies. They would hurt her over and over only to return their phone calls.
2. Don't do what I do. She hurt herself, she knew she was in bondage and didn't want us kids to fall into the same mistakes. She begged me not to drink. It hurts me so bad remembering her face when I picked up that 40oz, guzzling it in front of her trying to hurt her. And it did.
3. "You can be anything you want."  She really wanted the best for us, she wanted us to have dreams.
4. Conviction. She always knew how to make you feel convicted. She reminded you that someone was always WATCHING, my father or God knew everything. They were watching down on me. They were either proud of me or....
5. To FIGHT. She was a scrapper. She could come off that chair and knock you across the room without blinking. 5'1, 110 she could hold her own. The fight was the internal desire to let no one intimidate her.
6. Independence. I can take care of myself. This is a double edged sword. She was a single mom who made a lot of bad choices, I found myself determined to survive. I learned to take care of all of us. I have unfortunately also learned to not depend on others.
7. PRAY. My mother taught me how to pray. She always prayed with us. On our hands and knees we bowed our heads and prayed even as teenagers.  
8. Cook, I am not a Master Chef but I can cook. My mom didn't use a recipe box, this is how I have learned.
9. To never grow up. I remember my mom doing cart wheels around the yard well into her 40's. She was crazy, She once jumped in the pool at one of the houses that she cleaned. She cleaned out their liquor cabinet first! My grandma had to get her out of the pool,  my mom was doing laps showing off.  We were not laughing at the time.
10. "Do as I say not as I do."  This is pretty hypocritical. But I got it. She loved me more than she loved herself.

As I think about my son posting our business on social media, I think,"Whatever."
It is REAL. I am not perfect. It takes so much work trying to be something you are not.
You may look at our family pictures and think we have it all together, Sorry, We don't .

Just because you Fail does not mean you are a failure.
My imperfections as a mother, a wife and everything else for that matter is endless.

I learned something that my mom never learned. To forgive yourself. To love yourself. To accept who you are and not who you wish you were. To not worry about what others think., Its between you and God.

“There is a kind of beauty in imperfection.” – Conrad Hall -