FIXING WHAT'S BROKEN...
between you and your daughter… and between you and your son … and between you and your mom
Mother’s Day is just hours away… a day to celebrate your mother, a time to honor her.
And a day to be honored by your daughters and your sons. A day to celebrate who you are and what you’ve done and what you’re doing still.
Or not.
Because for so many of you, Mother’s Day is a day to grieve what you didn’t have and wish you did and still want…
With your own mother.
With your daughter.
With your son.
And I’ve sat with you and I’ve heard your stories and I’ve shared mine. We’ve cried some real tears together over all that wishing and wanting and deep down longing and the hurt that goes with it. The pain that won’t go away with an aspirin or two or a formula or book.
And it’s always there.
Those who have been hurt by a mother or disappointed by a daughter or rejected by a son… they live with chronic pain.
Aching, throbbing, why-won’t-this-go-away questions that may never be answered in a way that makes sense of the wrongness of it all.
But my dear women, there is wisdom for this in the Scriptures. God knows all about broken relationships And He is the master restorer.. in fact He calls Himself the Redeemer!
Do you know what that means?
“Redemption involves winning back, buying back, or repurchasing something that belongs to you…”[1]
Jesus is our Redeemer, He brought you back when you’d drifted far from Him, and He can bring back that one you love and have lost and want to love again.
He is all about connection. He made us for that very purpose- that we would be so closely connected to Him that we would walk in step with His heart.
And He knows what it’s like to lose that connection. To have it broken by sin and willfulness and neglect and not caring.
He knows it hurts.
Gosh He knows…
Because He’s felt it with you. That hurt, the tears, the distance.
The only difference is that it’s never His fault… though He sure does take an awful lot of blame.
And truth be told, it’s usually at least somewhat our fault when things go wrong with our children— when they grow up and reject who we are.
And there’s usually at least a little bit wrong on our part when we can’t get along with our mothers.
Maybe not all our fault, maybe not as much as we get thrown our way, but no doubt about it, we’ve done our share to wreck the relationship.
I know that’s hard to swallow. As a mom, you’ve poured yourself into your kids. Your body swelled and stretched and bore the pain. You gave more than you knew you had. You loved that baby girl. You agonized over your son.
And now they tell you that you did it all wrong?
How dare they?
Right?
Or not…
And didn’t you deserve a mom who would be there for you? Wasn’t she supposed to protect you and make life wonderful— all warm cookies and fuzzy memories? Shouldn’t she love you and accept you and be proud of who you’ve become?
Yes! Of course yes.
And you have every right to be mad. You would have done it differently. You would have known better. And so should she...
Or not…
I don’t know your dilemma. I don’t live with your pain. But I do know about mine.
And I’ve found answers… or at least hope for answers… in the Words of God. And so can you.
The Scriptures are full of fractured relationships, stories of lives torn apart by regrets. Pictures of people who did what they shouldn’t have done. Raw, real stuff with the ways of God woven into the stories to bring some semblance of redemption, of buying back what should have been theirs in the first place.
There’s good stuff there, girls. Wisdom for how to fix the brokenness.
But here’s the reality: you have to do it His way.
Will you decide right now that it’s worth it? Will you chose to do what He says, whatever He says, to restore that fissure between—
you and your mom…
or
you and your daughter…
or
you and your boy?
Will you get your heart ready for Mother’s Day?
From my heart,
Diane
Coming Saturday… Redeeming What is Broken Between You and Your Daughter
And next week… Redeeming What is Broken Between You and Your Son and
Redeeming What is Broken Between You and Your Mom
[1] Ann Spangler, Praying the Names of Jesus, pg. 340