the song of my heart after a very difficult week.

A few weeks ago my mom called and asked me to give her the power of attorney document back which she and my dad had made for me so that I could take care of their medical and financial decisions.  He was ill and so was she and neither of them was in any mental condition to be able to decide things on their own.  Since then my dad has died and I've been handling my mom’s situation without any problem.

We have had tension between us.  I am not my dad and I am not capable of being her ‘everything’ as he was.  She has never been on her own and she expected me to ‘take care’ of her just like he did.  I’d promised him before I died to take care of her.  But we have different understandings of what that meant obviously.  I’m not a coddler and I cannot fill the void in my mom – much less fix her.  She has put an enormous pressure on me and because she has a 3 yr old sense of emotional maturity she tries to manipulate me into being what she wants me to be.  I of course refuse.  I am not responsible to fix her, as I said, and even if I were I could not.  I've given her everything I could and the best that I could: being Jesus love, trying to show her that being broken is not the only way to live.  I have loved her and have tried to honor her and tried to give her skills to live independently as well.  My job was not to do for her but to give her the opportunity to learn how to do for herself as I saw it.  And she has gotten better and stronger and other than having her childlike tantrums over nobody to take care of her.  

She has not appreciated my way of taking care of her.  She went to Missouri this past summer with Danny and I do not know if this is it but it’s all I could think of – other than her trying to manipulate me – yet again.  Her aunt passed away and their grand children were like vultures over the estate evidently.  I can’t think why she would be concerned that I would be like that.  I've had legal access and physical access to her money for several years and have not touched a cent or even tried.  I’m not concerned about her money for myself.  Only that she does not lose it before she is gone.  Duffy on the other hand has tried to get hold of her money, at least in part, more than once.  He’s defrauded her by using her credit card without permission.  He’s taken her property and sold it for money for himself.  He’s taken money on loan and never repaid her.  He lies and is a thief.  That’s the bottom line.  When at a meeting with her financial adviser we decided that she needed to close that credit card account and open another one with only her and I having access.  So that he could not use it ‘accidently’ as he stated was the case.  That’s what we did and until now she has not given him the number at all.  Also she has had me use it for her for several things without any problems.

All of this is simply to indicate that I've dealt with my mom with integrity and honor.  I have not used her or tried to manipulate her into giving me money for anything.  My brother has let his property go to the point that it was days away from being auctioned due to back taxes – which I paid for him.  I've not been reimbursed either. 

So….  When she told me that she wanted the power of attorney back it hit me to the core of who I am.  It was insulting, hurtful and showed me that she was not thinking straight.  And I got angry.  She said that I had shown her that I did not like her and did not want to be around her.  This is true.  I do not like her.  She is a child and manipulative and incapable of thinking of others whatsoever.  She is selfish.  And I told her so.  I told her that we have nothing in common and I do not like her.  I do love her, she is my mother, and I am not going to go back on my word to my dad to take care of her.  But she was right, I do not like her and do not like spending time with her.  I also told her that if she removed the power of attorney then she would be taking away my ability to help her when she needed me. So she said she would not do it.

Well I asked her the other day on a hunch if she had revoked it.  She said yes.  It is registered at the courthouse that I have no control at all in her affairs.  And I got so angry because she has no idea what she has done to herself and because she has slapped me and my dad in the face by doing this.  She said she is an independent person.  And she said that she did it because I told her that I hated her.  I said no such thing.  So I went over to talk to her and sort it out.  She said that I hated her and I said no I do not hate you I love you, you are my mother.  I do not like you.  We have nothing in common at all but I love you.  And she said like and love are the same thing.  And so I told her to take me out of the will, out of the entire thing.  If I am such a threat to her that she has to remove my ability to help her then I want her to get the facts.  I do not want her money.  I never did and I never will.  Take me out of the will completely.  Take me off of the bank account, the safety deposit box and remove me from being executor of her will.  I do not want anything to do with this anymore.  You have insulted my integrity and hurt me beyond repair.  I still love you but I want nothing else to do with you.  I do not have any legal right to have your back any more and you are now on your own.  Duffy will take whatever he can get and I cannot stop him now.

I do not like confrontation.  I do not like it when people don’t like me.  My mother as much as called me a thief and in her attempts to manipulate me into doing what she wants she has pushed me away completely.  She has twisted the arrow in my heart that has been there forever which tells me that I am not good enough.  She has hurt me beyond repair.  I will do what I need to but I cannot invest any more of my heart in her.

And that was Thursday evening.

All week long I have had my head in severe pain from the nerve damage done after surgery on the bone tumor.

Friday I woke up with severe pain in my right hip almost making it so I could not walk.  It was not a good day but I got through work with my friend’s love.  Cheryl comforted me and listened while I vented and cried about my mom.

That day I found a house that might be the one for Amanda and Denny and went to see it.  It is wonderful and Denny came to see it and agreed.  So we put an offer on it. 

That lifted my spirits a lot.  But still underneath was the turmoil of my relationship with my mom.  And I was restless Saturday all day.  However I was half way in waking and sleep and thinking of the relationship I have with my children.  I’m so thankful that my daughter and I are close.  I’m so thankful that I've got a son who loves me and respects me as well.  I was pondering the fact that he has joined his wife’s family and pretty much left ours.  I was not bemoaning it or upset, just thinking about the dynamics of things whey it occurred to me that in a marriage the bride is ‘given away’ to the groom.  She belongs to him and his family when she is married.  Not the other way around.  Both of course have their own family – a new one.   Leave and cleave.   And it occurred to me that as the bride of Jesus I've been given to Him.  I no longer belong to my mom’s family, I belong to Jesus family.  We have our own now. 

For a while now I've been building ancestry, looking for connection to something to belong to, a past that I could call my own – beyond the painful family that I was born into – a history of something more and deeper.   I've also been searching for a love that was more than I've ever known a true love relationship that I could depend on at last as my very own.  Most of my life I've not felt loved.  My mom did not love me.  She told me so.  The hardest arrow…

So all day Saturday I just relaxed and enjoyed being in a warm home.  I played games on the computer and thought a bit about the relationship stuff.  It was a comfort to me to realize that I had no allegiance to this world as Jesus bride.  To know that I no longer had to feel bad about what has become my inability to help my mom any more.  Knowing that she was the one who severed the relationship was not enough to give me peace about it since I know that she is not capable of making those decisions clearly.  But knowing Jesus was my family now and that I have left that other family behind is allowing me to see that I am no longer going to be held responsible for her. 

Of course my heart has continued to yearn for love.  It has longed to hear Jesus voice telling me that I am His and that my heart belongs to him, and his to me.  Of course I've continued to search near and far for someone here and now to give me what I honestly know is not possible from any human man.  My heart has searched anyway.

So I turned on the TV and saw the movie Robin Hood was on, I’d missed most of it.  But I turned it on anyway because it is such a beautiful love story.  And I was just in time for the credits to begin, and….   And…. Then it happened.  The music came on and I knew the song, love the song, dreamt of being the object of the song ever since I’d first heard it.  But this time hearing it was amazing.  You see….  This time it was Jesus singing it to me.  This time it became personal.  This time the words came into my heart, a love song meant just for my ears.  Telling me that his love for me was the reason for all he does, has done, and ever will do.  His love telling me that what he felt for me meant more to him than his own life.  Telling me that he’d die for me…

And the upside down painful world of broken dreams lost opportunities and sad loneliness that I've known was made right.  My heart is what he has been after, not to change or to fix even.  My heart is what his heart has been longing for.  And it’s true, everything he does – he does it for me.

Look into my eyes, you will see
What you mean to me
Search your heart, search your soul
And when you find me there you'll search no more

Don't tell me it's not worth tryin' for
You can't tell me it's not worth dyin' for
You know it's true
Everything I do, I do it for you

Look into your heart, you will find
There's nothin' there to hide
Take me as I am, take my life
I would give it all, I would sacrifice

Don't tell me it's not worth fightin' for
I can't help it, there's nothin' I want more

You know it's true
Everything I do, I do it for you
Oh yeah

There's no love, like your love
And no other, could give more love
There's nowhere, unless you're there
All the time, all the way, yeah

Look into your heart, baby

Oh, you can't tell me it's not worth tryin' for
I can't help it, there's nothin' I want more
Yeah, I would fight for you, give it all for you
Walk the wire for you, yeah I'd die for you

You know it's true
Everything I do, oh, I do it for you

Everything I do, darling
And we'll see it through
Oh we'll see it through
Oh yeah

Yeah!

Look into your heart
You can't tell me it ain't worth dying for
Oh yeah

I'll be there, yeah
I'll walk the wire
Oh, yeah

I'm going all the way, all the way, yeah

I did change one line slightly in this song which, after all, was written by a human man.  This only because I know without a doubt that Jesus would never lie.

And wouldn’t you know it.  RHM devo’s came on the heels of all this speaking to the rest of my heart’s cries….

The Trap of Integrity

Let me tell you, few things can mess you up as badly as trying to do your best. For the tender heart, the earnest heart, it is so discouraging to give all you have trying to do what you think Jesus would have you do, and find yourself falling short, sabotaging your own efforts at every turn. Discouragement and shame settle in like a long Seattle rain.

And this is what most Christians experience as the Christian life. Try harder; feel worse.

I spoke of cunning traps that replace the simple priority of loving Jesus. Here is a very surprising one—the trap of integrity. What I mean by this is when our attention turns to maintaining personal righteousness. This seems noble and right. Jesus told us to keep his commands. But this can be a trap because most Christians interpret this as “Try harder; do your best.”

I find myself slipping back into this weekly. A handful of symptoms tip me off. Exhaustion, for one. I’ll just find myself wrung out again. Or an unnamed internal distress; my insides all twisted up. Discouragement, that old nagging cloud of “I’m totally blowing it” back over me. Irritation with needy people. These symptoms—and a host of others—are the collateral damage that results from trying my best. They let me know I’ve fallen back to thinking that to love Jesus is to give my very best in living for him. And this is a sticky business. Because on the one hand, that’s true—to love him is to obey. But out of what resources? From what fountain of inner strength?But didn’t Jesus warn, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5)? The good news is this—you were never meant to imitate Christ.

His revolution is not self-transformation, but his transformation of us, from the inside out, as we receive his life and allow him to live through us. Vine, branch. Anything else is madness.

(Beautiful Outlaw, 229, 230)

And then this one:

We Can Only Hope for What We Desire

Once we come to accept that we can never find or hang on to the life we have been seeking, what then? As Dallas Willard writes, it matters for all the world to know that life is ahead of us.

I meet many faithful Christians who, in spite of their faith, are deeply disappointed in how their lives have turned out. Sometimes it is simply a matter of how they experience aging, which they take to mean they no longer have a future. But often, due to circumstances or wrongful decisions and actions by others, what they had hoped to accomplish in life they did not . . . Much of the distress of these good people comes from a failure to realize that their life lies before them . . . the life that lies endlessly before us in the kingdom of God. (The Divine Conspiracy)

Blaise Pascal also observed, "We are never living, but hoping to live; and whilst we are always preparing to be happy, it is certain, we never shall be so, if we aspire to no other happiness than what can be enjoyed in this life."

Desire cannot live without hope. Yet, we can only hope for what we desire. There simply must be something more, something out there on the road ahead of us, that offers the life we prize. To sustain the life of the heart, the life of deep desire, we desperately need to possess a clearer picture of the life that lies before us.

(Desire , 104-5)