Sparkle

This is taken from the journaling card hidden behind the photo on the layout at the bottom of this post. I created this layout earlier in the year.

Mom, I’ve been thinking about the journaling for this page for two months now, off and on. When I saw this photo of you, the title came to me right away. Despite the fact that you were in your grubbies, ringing out a rag because you were helping us clean the house we had just moved into, there is something about your eyes in this photo that inspired the large pink adjective on the front of this page. However, conveying the emotions that I felt as I scrapbooked this photo took a little more fore-thought.

Our history has been anything less than sparkly. While we had as much closeness as I suppose a mother and young daughter could when I was younger, at one point things went horribly, horribly wrong. Through the hurt, and wounds, and scars that followed for years after, there was no light between you and me. I could not see past the dark cloudy veil of my pain to see anything else. You were working through pain of your own. And Jesus was working in both of us.

One day, I got the call that the doctor had found a lump in your breast. You were in tears, and I did not fully comprehend the scope of the situation, having not much knowledge or experience with cancer. Over the years when divorce had left an ugly, gaping wound in my soul that would not heal, I had wished repeatedly that you would have just died, so that I could mourn and move on, instead of having daily to live with what had happened to us. But this phone call woke me up. Did I really want to go to my grave with the bitterness I held in my heart? Could I not meet you on some level, and get to know you there? Did I really want to go through the rest of my life wondering “what if?”

The road from there to here has not been easy. There have been many more painful moments. There have been a lot of things that we have agreed to disagree on. But through the power of forgiveness, to your victory over breast cancer, from the way you finally let me be a woman in your eyes, to the way I can see you, finally, walking the talk, we have grown. We have changed. Ours is not the relationship of a mother and daughter so much as it is of two women who have become—dare I say it?—friends. Finally, the veil is gone, Mom. The dross has been removed through the fires of pain and hurt, forgiveness and love.

And at last, I can truly see how you sparkle.

Photo: Jan 2006

Journaling: March 24, 2007

My mom looking gorgeous while she helps us, just like she does. Pink shabby chic-style scrapbook layout.