IN HER ABSENCE, HE IS MORE THAN ENOUGH

I'm writing for Five Minute Friday and this week's prompt word is ABSENCE.

There are some days when I feel deeply the absence of a mother to talk to.    In fact, there are a great many days when I have felt that.      

I've felt many, many times during my life the absence of her help, wisdom, generosity, empathy, compassion, comfort, protection, etc.   

I've been feeling her absence for a very long time.   

I felt it when I was a child and teenager over many issues, like needing protection from an abusive father.

I've felt it when I've just needed someone to talk to, someone to help me make sense of things like rejection and pain and relationship strain and paperwork and housework dilemmas and on and on it goes.   

I've felt it when I have needed parenting advice.

I've felt it when I needed encouragement or wisdom or just plain old practical help or a shoulder to cry on.  

I've felt it when it would have been nice (actually very much needed) to have a break from 24/7 parenting.   

Is my mother gone?  No, but her absence in terms of emotional, spiritual and practical availability has left a huge deficit in my soul.   

My Mum has not been able to do most of that harder stuff for me.

Why?

Because she didn't care or doesn't care at all?

No, not at all.   

It was because her capacity to give love and grace and compassion and comfort and wisdom and practical help was severely impacted and impaired by the absence of a giving, generous, gracious, wise, capable mother in her own life.    

And her mother,  my grandmother, was severely impacted by the absence of a giving mother.  And so it goes on, back through the generations.

One day, many years ago, during a fit of anger with the Lord, about all that my mother wasn't doing for me, He gave me a picture, which He often does when He wants to show me layers of truth. 

He showed me a picture of a child running onto a busy road and the mother, in a wheelchair, sitting by the side of the road, calling her child back because she couldn't get up and run after them.

That's when I understood that it wasn't because my mother didn't care.   It was because she wasn't able to.     

We don't expect people with physical impairments to do more than their bodies allow.

But we expect people with emotional and mental impairments to do more than they can, because we can't see their disability.  

And when it's our Mum, we have a LOT of unwritten expectations and even demands.   And some of those expectations are absolutely reasonable.   In fact, they're built-in, God-given needs.   

It's not unreasonable to want your mother to be emotionally available, to provide comfort and reassurance and affirmation and shelter and empathy and wisdom and so much more.   Our needs are not unreasonable and many of us have grown up being trained and taught that our needs are unimportant and unreasonable because we've asked people with disabilities to meet them, albeit unknowingly.

And sometimes, it's because they simply didn't want to.  

It is both that they couldn't and they wouldn't, and we have to acknowledge that.  

So, what do we do in the light of that absence, and the lack, when we  realise some of the damage done, once we recognise it?

We can get angry.  I did.   

We can stay angry.  I did that for a while too. 

We can focus on all that they  haven't done.  Yep, did that.  That feels right and good and feeds the anger cycle.   It makes sense and it feels 'good', like rubbing a wound.   

Or - we can move forward from a hard place, a place of pain and brokenness.  

We can accept the absence with all its lack and loss and pain and start there.    

When we do that, it brings freedom.

It's the freedom to recognise that while she may not have been able to, most of the time she wanted to.

It's the freedom to look beyond the lack.   

It's the freedom to stop focusing on all that she can't do and won't do, for whatever reason, and look to God instead to meet those very real needs. 

And they are needs.   God wasn't disputing my need for all of those things. He just wanted me to be free to look beyond her incapacity to what HE wanted to provide for me.  

And He has.  In many ways, through many people over many years.   And He's doing it again now, in a different church family, because my biological family isn't there for me.   

We can ask God to fill the voids that the absence created.   We can look beyond the failures of their absence and see Him and see how He is right now meeting those needs and wanting to.  

And that's what my mother should have done and could have done and didn't.  She could have got help and got healed and she didn't, for various reasons.   I have had to forgive her for that too.  

But in that, I have had to choose NOT to replicate that cycle by resisting help and healing.   Done that too, at various times and for various reasons.  

And my own daughters have suffered for that.   My own daughters have suffered for my emotional, intellectual, physical absence in many ways and in many seasons of their lives.   And now, as I get healed, I'm trying to be there for them, when they need it, in a healthy way.   

So, in the light of what my mother's absence has done, I have a choice to make and to keep making.  We all do.   We can perpetuate that absence cycle or we can say, "It stops here.   With me.  With God's help!"  

Because God is a powerful God of redemption and restoration and healing and provision.   

We can face the trauma and the wounds and the anger and bitterness in our own hearts that have crippled us.   We can acknowledge the generational traits and tendencies and curses that have crippled our families.   We can ask for and expect and receive God's redemptive grace and mercy in our story.    We can ask for God's cleansing of our hearts from our own sin and rebellion because of the wounds, because of the absence.  

And when we do that, perhaps we can become the person for someone else that wasn't there for us.   

Or we can let the absence of what we actually needed continue to cripple us and justify our unforgiveness and pain and reactions.  

Like Joyce Meyer says, 'We can be pitiful or we can be powerful, but we can't be both at the same time'.   

We all have a choice in the light of any absence in our lives.    What choice are we making?

My choice, daily, when I feel her absence and when I don't feel it but live it anyway, is to fill that absence with His ever-present presence.   There I find compassion, help, empathy, comfort, wisdom, strength, power, disciple and fullness of joy.  

You will show me the path of life;

In Your presence is fullness of joy;

At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.  Ps 16:11

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.  Ps 23:4

Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory.  Ps 73:23-24

The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.  Zeph 3:17

He fills every need that someone else's absence has left in our souls.   

  

I've come back to this song many, many times when I just need something from Him, my El Shaddai, my more-than-enough God, who fills every need that I could bring Him, if I will.  

I need you to soften my heart

And break me apart

I need you to open my eyes

To see that You're shaping my life

All I am, I surrender

Give me faith to trust what you say

That you're good and your love is great

I'm broken inside, I give you my life

'Cause I may be weak

But Your spirit strong in me

My flesh may fail

My God you never will

I may be weak

But Your spirit strong in me

My flesh may fail

My God you never will