Funny thing about my mother

my mother and me, 1970, I am 6 weeks old…see why I thought she was a Star?

…I just realized a few years ago that she wasn’t perfect, you can not believe how relieved I was…this takes a great deal of pressure off of ME!

Thankfully none of my offspring will ever struggle with any false ideas of my perfection; I have been way too successful at proving my humanity…

My mother was orphaned at the tender age of eight, my grandmother had died in her sleep, and my mother found her…our daughter Emily is named after the grandmother I never knew.
  My grandfather was still physically alive at that time but unable to care for my mom, nor were her three adult brothers.
  She ended up a victim of foster care, rumor has it she is reported in the Detroit News in the 50’s for running away from an orphanage and taking 3 buses in the middle of the night to get to her dad, she was nine years old.
  That explains my stubbornness and determination, it is genetic.
  She married my dad when she was 18, he was also on his own (whole other story).

 I knew NONE of this when I was living my careless and lovely childhood in the seventies and eighties…All I knew was…my parents both worked, HARD.
  They loved us, and took great care of us.
 I knew my mother was beautiful (I really believed that she was a glamorous movie star in her past life but didn’t want anyone to know, you know, so she could focus on being a house-wife and a room mom to my first grade class-
without being followed by the paparazzi!)  My fa
ther was my hero; handsome, strong, able to protect us from anything (like Elvis Presley with a black-belt).

As life progressed I was still naïve to the pain my parents had endured as children, the pain that drew them to the side of Jesus, and the cycle of generational-curses that they were fighting to stop.

I knew nothing…but I knew my mother prayed, ALL THE TIME…I knew she sang to Jesus in the kitchen, and I had caught her numerous times in the middle of the night.
  If she was breast-feeding a baby, she was praying, if she was in her room she was praying…she never stopped praying, for us. She had sheets of scripture she prayed over our family every morning, while it was still dark.  S
he prayed for me when I was nervous about a solo I had in choir in third grade, and a final exam I had in college.
  She prayed for me when my first love broke my heart when I was 15, and my husband died when I was 25.
 

She is still praying, through all the disappointment, through all the years, she never stops…she wonders out loud how “with all the prayer” our family has still suffered so.
  All I can say is, “Mom, what would have happened if you hadn’t prayed at all?”

The house I grew up in was meticulous, we had home cooked dinner’s every night, my parents both worked, but raised us themselves, and we had no extended family.
  I appreciate the life they gave us more than ever now that I am raising my own family.
  No ,sadly my
mother is not a movie star, nor is she perfect, but it is her prayers that has kept me alive and allows MY children to walk in freedom today, and that is good enough.

I hope my children, when thery look back will
remember me as a w
omen  su
bmitted in prayer over her family…that will be legacy enough
for me!