If We Knew God’s Greater Plan...

Recently, a  friend presented me with a question; If we knew what God’s greater plan was, or why we are meant to endure such things, would that make it any easier? I have spent countless nights pleading to God, in an effort to change his plan for my mother, but I will never forget the moment my pleas changed from “please God, see my mother through this one more time” to “God, please take her and end this battle”.

 My mother spent years of her life striving for perfection always trying to please everyone. She fought many a losing battle and I remember my father often telling her to “stop trying to save the world”. Life is full of letdowns when you have such good intentions.

She was a dedicated wife who’s only mistake was choosing a mate who had no interest in pretending to be perfect. He tried to teach her to focus on the good rather than dwell on the bad. But she was not ready for this liberating approach and perhaps resented the fact that it came so easily to him.

She was a dedicated teacher in the school district that recognized her special ability to handle the worst kids they could throw at her, only to have them turn their backs on her and accuse her of being too harsh on those kids. I often run into former students who tell me, with a residual look of fear in their eyes, that she was tough. So tough that they wish their kid had a teacher just like her!

And she was a dedicated mother who raised a son who seem to master the art of at least appearing to be perfect, and a daughter who spent her teen years resenting the very idea of such unrealistic expectations and often found pleasure in throwing her rebellious imperfections and her poor mother’s face.

Being a mother now myself, I have learned a lot about just how perfectly imperfect my mother was. It wasn’t perfection she was demanding from others, it was simply her want to see her loved ones, and even those rotten students, be the best people they could be. And she was always harder on herself than she was on anyone else when those people fell short. I have no doubt, for instance, that the lessons in tough love that she was forced to teach her  idiot teenage daughter were far more hurtful for her than they were for that foolish young girl.

In the last leg of her time here on earth, she became a grandmother. Her never ending soul-searching journey to find herself seemed to stop dead in its tracks the moment she met her first grandchild. She was happy to simply be grandma and never seemed to struggle with that role as she did with all the others. Her need to please and appear perfect found the ideal outlet in her grandchildren. In my five-year-old daughter’s eyes, grandma could do no wrong. Madeline is all at once,  the lucky one for getting to know her grandma so well, and the poor little girl who spent the last year waiting patiently to resume weekly sleepovers and camp outs by candlelight in the living room at grandma’s house. And while my heart breaks for the newest grand kids who have been cheated out of knowing their perfect grandma, I am devastated by the thought of my daughter losing her first best friend. I can only imagine the pleas  my mother made to her God, begging him to let her watch her grandchildren grow up and to let her shine a bit longer in the starring role of her lifetime, just as I prayed that all of her grandchildren could get to know the capable woman I still conjure up in my dreams every night; the woman who’s world revolved around them, not her illness.

Just as her downward spiral began, she took a very uncharacteristic moment to sit me down and tell me that she is proud of the mother I am to her precious grandchildren. I believe she is thankful and respects me for breaking the cycle of demanding perfection. I mother with my heart and without regard to how it appears to others. She was grateful to me for giving her grandchildren the kind of peaceful, stress-free, fun filled childhood that every child should know and probably doesn’t give herself enough credit for giving her own children the same. And she was pleasantly surprised that despite my obvious flaws, my children, her grandchildren, are genuinely kind, caring, polite, headstrong, independent, and yes, perfectly imperfect.

It took a while, but my mother did learn to stop taking life so seriously. And perhaps a credit to her “pal Petey” and his odd sense of humor, she learned to laugh, even at herself. We all grew to appreciate my mother more as she grew to appreciate herself. We were thankful rather than burdened by Sunday dinners at mom’s house. We were amused rather than annoyed by her incessant curiosity. We even saught the  nagging, motherly advice that we once resented because it was forced upon us. And my father, her ex-husband, never wastes an opportunity to tell us what a wonderful woman our mother was.

 Her faith saw her through many hard times. And eventually she learned to stop judging her life through the critical eyes of others, and instead begin living and learning through the forgiving eyes and unconditional love of her God. We found great comfort in watching my mother’s faith remain so unwavering during this agonizing process. Who are we to question God while we watched in awe as her faith held up and she still insisted on going to church every week even though it involved the challenges of the wheelchair and the humbling inability to rise with the rest of the congregation to sing his praises and the need to be lifted in and out of the pews, and the special,  doting attention from her loving and dedicated church family, which she once would have found terribly uncomfortable.

 I respect the Lord’s path, and I genuinely trust him. I only ask that he respect us for learning the valuable lessons this type of tragedy is meant to teach us, and to take note that we did this a long time ago, even before we were forced to do so out of fear and that the cost of losing someone we love. And I pray that he shower her with all the praise and accolades her dedication to him surely warrants.

 God bless you Mom. I am certain he will.