Eclectic Shades Magazine July 2019 | Page 67

Being stubborn and determined, I separated myself, which I felt I deserved and needed in order to be able to survive and move forward with my life. Despite this, God has continued to bless me abundantly, and I now see that He knew I would need the loss of my dear mother to bend my ear and to break my spirit to push me to reconcile with my mother in my heart.

Today, I see everything as an essential experience. My mom’s role as my mother and my role as a mother has unfolded and intertwined painfully, yet beautifully. I can truly, really truly, say I know how to love in spite of encountering, participating in, and even practicing behaviors I know are unacceptable. We are all designed with our own perfect imperfections. Dorothy Mae Ross, thank you for your gift of life, and for giving me a piece of you so that I can carry on your legacy.

On the day that my sibling and I laid our mother to rest, we agreed it was a day of reconciliation. We said, “What our mother couldn’t do, let’s complete; what she did well, let’s continue to carry out; where she fell short, let’s build stronger bridges; and what she couldn’t say—through us, let her voice be heard. Let us not forget that she was God’s gift to us, and we were God’s gift to her.” We gifted one another, unselfishly and unabashedly, the assurance that we can still be loved, respected, and appreciated even in the midst of our disagreements and differences.

My prayer above all is that we will all be reconciled so that we can fully and freely enjoy, with no regrets, individually or collectively, every drop of life that remains in each of us.

“Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain. But those who let distress drive them away from God are full of regrets, end up on a deathbed of regrets. And now, isn’t it wonderful all the ways in which this distress has goaded you closer to God? You’re more alive, more concerned, more sensitive, more reverent, more human, more passionate, more responsible. Looked at from any angle, you’ve come out of this with purity of heart” (2 Corinthians 7:10-11, The Message).