I don't miss my birth-mother ... yes, I call her that. Poor lady, she just did not have the tools to be a nurturing mother of children. No, we were not neglected, she cooked for us, she sewed our clothing, she kept a clean house, she did the work she thought was required of her, but she just couldn't do the rest.
However, God gave me my God Mother and my Mother Louise to fill the Gap. I had the experience of two very loving women to teach me values and to love me unconditionally.
When my God Mother died, I could not attend the funeral and I sent this to my God Sister to be read at the service. I want to share it here because sometimes the mother we were given at birth just can't give us what we need to become the person we were meant to be, but someone in our lives can fill that role:
"My first thoughts this morning were about Margaret, Mom, to me. (She and Dad gave me permission to call them that when they became my God Parents and all of you became my real brothers and sisters.)
These are the things I would say, if I could come to her funeral, so I have chosen to share them with you today.
As a child I was introduced to God by another girlfriend’s family. They took me to church with them. I believed in Him immediately. I am convinced He wanted me to know Him. I really didn’t know what church and religion were about until I experienced the long talks with your father and mother. I did grow up thinking that God had given me to the wrong family.
Maybe that was true, but He gave me the opportunity and blessing to learn about Him and a whole new set of values that changed my whole life. It was from Mom that I learned about unconditional love. I learned that children were not supposed to be beaten for small or big offenses. I learned that no one was perfect, but they could be truly loved in spite of their imperfections.
When we first started our long talks, I had a survivor’s integrity. In other words, I was willing to lie or do anything to avoid any kind of punishment. She taught me a whole new set of life values. She taught me to live a life where I could respect myself as a person of value. She insisted that I honor my own father and mother and not to hate them, but I will admit now, the minute your father and mother became my God Parents, they became the parents of my heart.
Your family became my family. Everything that was missing at my birth-home, I found in your home. Perfect or not, it was such a priceless gift. My whole life has been enriched by the experiences I shared with Mom and Dad and all of you.
Mom taught me how to love. She taught me how to be kind. She taught me not to be a liar. She taught me how to laugh and how to laugh at myself. She taught me to forgive. She taught me not to be judgmental. Mom taught me to trust others. Something I doubt if I could ever have done without having experienced her unending trust in me.
She taught me the simple things, too. She taught me good manners. Mom and Dad taught me about Christmas.. both about presents and about honoring the birth of Christ.
She taught me to dream of being more than I ever thought I could be. She taught me self-respect. She and Dad truly made a real difference in how I viewed myself and how I would choose to live my life.
They both taught me about music and introduced me to books and new ideas and most important they taught me to think beyond what I was reading or learning from someone else, but to think for myself and to believe I had the power, given to me by God, to think and reason things out on my own.
They both taught me, but especially Mom, that money, or the lack of money, was not the measure of a person, but how that person lived their life really determined his or her true value. Things, in and of themselves, are beautiful, but it was the kind of person you were that mattered even more. In other words, she taught me a whole new value system and how to live ethically and with Faith.
They, your own mother and father, and especially Mom, had a lot of work to do to re-direct my life and she did so with great kindness.
Both Mom and Dad taught me about Faith, but Mom made it very real for me. She taught me that it was an every day part of life and not just for Sundays.
Both of your parents, and my wonderful God Parents, gave me the courage to defy my birth-parents and to go to college. Another priceless gift. Oh, how I was blessed. They gave me a home to come home to on summer vacations and school holidays. They gave me a place of safety filled with love.
Yes, I said “good-bye” to her many years ago, but she has been with me each and every day of my life as she was, and still is, very much responsible for forming the kind of woman I am today. Without her unconditional love and guidance, I would have never known about many of these important life lessons.
These are only some of the things I learned in those long conversations I had with Mom. However, I think the most priceless gift I received from her was the gift of true friendship and unconditional love.
Ah, that friendship was so rich and full. Another blessing ! Oh, how we could laugh at nothing and share anything. We didn’t always agree on everything, but that was part of the wonderful richness in the friendship. We didn’t have to agree about everything. That meant we could talk about anything. We both needed that.
This very real friendship was something I had never experienced with anyone else in my whole life. I feel so rich for having had her as a part of my life.
Thank you ever so much for sharing your parents with me."
Altho' I talk about Faith in this post, and we don't do that much on this site, please understand that is just a part of who I am, and I am not pushing it on anyone else who plays here. I am sharing how someone outside one's birth-family can change the course of one's life.
