Mother

I've always been a little bit envious of my friends with close families. I also love to spend time at their houses. Last year I made friends with a boy in my Global Issues class and I went over to his house once or twice. We were never extremely close, and we only hung out for a little while, but I loved being at his house. His family was so close, so open with each other, and I just loved to sit around in his kitchen, soaking up what seemed to be the tangible love in the room.

Being home for an extended period of time always reminds me of how distant I feel from my family. I've written a lot here about my relationship with my dad and how it has slowly been improving over the last year. I braved the ice to go spend some time with him tonight and ended up eating dinner there and staying for about twice as long as I had planned, cut short only by my dad's bedtime. We had quite a nice time.

I've never been able to talk with my mom the way I have with my dad. I can't talk to my dad about my feelings, and while I know my mom would love to hear in depth about my life and has many times expressed the desire for me to talk to her more, to tell her things like "Hey, Nate and I are pretty serious" before just saying "Nate asked me to marry him", I feel like I can't, and I don't know how to get past that.

I feel like my relationship with my mom was defined my senior year of high school. Those who knew me then know the story, but many I've met since haven't heard it: I applied and was accepted to UNC Asheville. I sent in my deposit and had even applied for housing when, at the beginning of Spring Break, I got a letter from their financial aid department informing me that they were only awarding me $2000 a year in financial aid for a school that charges close to $30,000 a year for out of state tuition; there was no way I could afford to go. As soon as my mom told me the news I left my house and spent about an hour walking around my church's retreat center and praying. I didn't know what I was going to do, and God told me not to do anything. to just wait, and that His plan would reveal itself in time.

I consider that to be one of the pivotal moments of my life. I had only truly become a Christian that September, and it was a huge act of faith on my part not only to trust God with something so monumental, but to return to my family and friends and tell them that I had no idea what I was going to do in the fall and that I was just going to wait and see because God told me to. The friends I could handle; I knew that some of them may think I was being weird but that I could be sure of some support there, but I was terrified of telling my mom. I was sure she was going to eat me alive, and Julie agreed with me. I was shocked when I told her what I was doing - or not doing - and instead of yelling she smiled, hugged me, and said she was proud of me and that she would support me no matter what I did. The next day she changed her mind. Apparently overnight she had remembered everything that could possibly go wrong when one does not have a plan, and all the problems of not enrolling in college immediately after high school, and totally revoked all the support she had promised me. It was war. For the next six weeks before I left for Teameffort that summer everything she said to me included a comment about me going to college in the fall. At the time I already near meltdown point because of I.B. exams (for those who never did I.B., imagine finals, only with the knowledge that if you fail a final you don't get your college diploma) and on top of that I was constantly fighting with my mom over her refusal to accept my decision, which I didn't even consider my decision as much as I considered it God's.

I called my mom three times the entire summer I was gone, and while we obviously don't fight like that anymore ever since that moment I have been operating under the understanding that the best way to get along with my mom is to not share the important stuff with her, to restrict our conversations to surface things, nothing that has too much significance to me, because when my mom refused to support my decision to follow God's plan and allow Him to control my life she proved to me that she doesn't understand me at the most fundamental level, and can't understand the way I think or see things because she can't relate to the framework of faith through which I operate. It hurts a lot to be so misunderstood by someone so close to me. I know the only way to change that and fix our relationship is to let her in - because while my dad is the one holding me at a distance, I know that in this case I am the one preventing this relationship from growing - but I'm scared. I don't know why all of this suddenly came to me tonight, why I suddenly had all of these thoughts at once and was possessed of the urge to write them down - an hour ago I wasn't even thinking of this and now there are tear streaming down my cheeks - but I think this may be part of the reason God wants me to stay home this summer. It will be the longest amount of time I've been home since senior year and a prime opportunity to try to begin to repair my relationship with my mother, if I can find the courage.

I'm going to be praying about this a lot.