It's 11:30 p.m. She said she would be here by 10:00. I've learned to count on my mom being late whenever she says she'll be somewhere sometime. I stand outside in the unforgiving cold. It's a small price to pay to see my mom coming around that corner, the beaming lights and familiar clanking of her car's faithful engine. I wish I would have known that this much love could grow from so much adversity? When I lived with her, I couldn't wait to get away, and now, I hold on as fast as I can, when I can.
I met my mother when I was five years old. She was a stranger to me, 23 years old and clueless. Since then, we've been playing a wicked game of catch up. When I was a child I needed love and she was not yet ready to give it. When she, with repentant zeal, offered up that love, I was a seething teenager, an object of wrath, ready and willing to throw that love in her face. For a while it seemed like we'd never align, both of us wayward satellites in the cold and empty darkness. In 1999, nearly twenty years after she had given birth to me, my mother missed my baptism -- I hadn't invited her. God had shone a light into my life but I was still so preoccupied with my own past trauma that I chose not to tell her about it. Why should I? She abandoned me after I was born the first time. I was wrong -- I know that now.
God changes our relationships by changing who we are individually and as I learned humility, as I struggled through forgiveness and as I learned to say I'm sorry, the narrative of my life began to fill itself with my mother's story. I learned that she left me in order to find my father. I learned that she, a young woman, braved the dangers of crossing a foreign desert twice in order to give me a better life. I learned that she had always loved me but had her own demons to fight and I had often gotten hurt in the struggle.
I learned that that one time she brought me lunch at school and I, embarrassed, had thrown it in the trash, she saw me do it, and wept. I learned that she had hoped to give me more, but she just didn't make enough money. I learned that my mother lost two children and that she often dreams about them. I learned that she prayed for me sometimes, even though she didn't know to whom she was praying. I learned that she forgave me and that she is proud I am her son.
I love my mom. I wait for her outside my house when she comes to visit. My wife and children wait with me. I wrap my arms around her and kiss her cheek and it really doesn't matter that she's late.
Christian is a member of the Riverside sector of the Inland Empire Church of Christ in California.
