Disowned - MY Story Part 19

So I’m fast forwarding to several months ago in MY Story.  I hadn’t had much communication from my mother since my wedding.  No congrats on my children.  No comments on how cute the pictures I sent were.  The random Facebook comment or phone call telling me about moose and snow in Alaska was the extent of our relationship.

Until I came home to find her and her new husband on my front porch one day.  I was surprised.  To be honest I was apprehensive.  I had made the decision to forgive.  And in that moment I made the decision to believe that God had done the work we had been praying for in her.  I would expect the best.  

I invited them in.  Introduced them to my children.  Made them lunch.  Called my husband and asked him to come home asap.  And I prayed constantly.  I prayed as I spoke.  I prayed as I cleared away the laundry on the sofa.  I prayed as I apologized they had to wait out in the heat for me to get home.  I prayed as I cooked.  I prayed as I served.  I prayed as I observed them with my children.

It wasn’t long before my calm reserve was tested.  They began to correct my children.  They began to put there own rules for how my children should behave in my home into place.  I brushed it off.  Let it slide off my back.  I didn’t reinforce what they said, but encouraged my boys in Spanish that they were behaving well and were not in trouble.  

And I waited for my husband to get home.  They began to inquire about a place to stay, but explained they didn’t have the money for a rental car.  I have a small car that barely fits my family of 5 and it would be impossible for me to take them to the hotel or pick them up from there.  So when Samuel arrived I asked if it was ok to let them stay.  He agreed.  They stayed the night and the next day.  

I began to observe some strange behavior.  My mother seemed almost childlike at times and went for frequent walks or went outside to get fresh air.  She carried a small bag with her when she went and once when she passed close by me with it I smelled it.  Marijuana.  

She went to walk and I placed a somewhat desperate phone call to Samuel.  She brought drugs into my house.  She brought drugs around my children.  She was high while playing with and picking up my babies.  

Samuel came home and we had dinner.  After dinner I asked if we could speak with them.  I asked if she had drugs in my house.  She said yes.  I told her we couldn’t have drugs in our home or around our children.  She would either have to dispose of the drugs and agree not to be high around my children, or she would have to leave.  She agreed, but asked to borrow our car to take the drugs to a storage unit she had about an hour away.  We said no.  We couldn’t allow our car to be used to transport drugs.  We agreed to help them find a rental car.

Everything seemed to have gone well and I was thanking God!  I left to run an errand and as soon as I walked back into the house I knew something had changed.  Samuel gave me a look and whispered to me that my mother had been crying.  

She came into the room with fury in her eyes.  She yelled at me to sit down and listen to her the same way she would yell at me as a child.  I responded calmly.  I did not sit.  I told her I would hear what she had to say, but that I would not allow her to speak to me that way in my house or in front of my children.  My oldest was asleep so he was saved from witnessing the scene.

She began to spew hate and anger.  I praise God that I have been able to forget the great majority I of what she said.  If I had written this soon after it happened I could tell you word for word what she said, but that wouldn’t do either of us any good.  

The general idea was that I had always been the bad child.  That I had never appreciated her.  That I was awful and the root of all of her problems.  And that everything good I had was thanks to her being a good mother.  

She said she was done with me.  That I was no longer her daughter.  My husband told her that she was wrong about me.  That he knows me inside and out and that I had been nothing but gracious to her and her husband.  I told her I would respect her wishes, but that if she ever changed her mind we were leaving the door open.

My husband took them to the airport so they could pick up a rental car.  He told me that she was yelling and hysterical the whole way, telling him about how evil I was and what a horrible person I was.  

And I was hurt.  And I was healed.  And I gave thanks to God for his embrace and that of my family.

And I thought that would be the end of it.

Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me.

Psalm 27:10