Category: Goodness

One of the most addictive things about this blogging business is the site statistics that WordPress gives you access to. You know, how many people have viewed which post, what links led them there, that type of thing. There’s also a section that tells you what people googled to find you. My all-time favorite is “christian nudists.”

Christian nudists?!?! Is that even a thing?? WHY??? And why on EARTH did Google think I had anything to say about that? Until today, I’m pretty sure the word nudist wasn’t anywhere on my blog.

Or December’s “what are jesse stem in catholic church.” Well, I don’t know. What are jesse stem in catholic church?

I’ve seen “I’m a consecrated virgin falling in love” which broke my heart. Friend, whoever you are, I’m praying for you!

But I saw one a while back that took my breath away: “what can write to tell my mother i adore her.”

Oh, my. I don’t know why the internet thinks you’ll find the answer here, but you certainly deserve it. What a beautiful question! And in honor of my mother’s birthday, I’ll attempt an answer by trying it myself. Want to know how amazing my mom is? Read on.

I spent 20 years in fantastic schools but my mother is the greatest teacher I’ve had. Even working 40 hours a week, she managed to instill in every one of her children a love of learning. For some of us, it’s sometimes more a love of knowing all the things than a true love of discovery, but the fact remains that my mother’s children are far better-educated than even our impressive resumes would indicate.

I can still hear her chanting the common feet of English poetry, making the analysis of a poem’s meter a game until I couldn’t hear Dr. Seuss without automatically counting and muttering, “anapestic tetrameter.” She taught me impeccable grammar and when to ignore it for the sake of style. She taught me fabulous words, above all when I was in trouble. To this day, the words “plebeian” and “troglodyte” always make me think of my mother. She taught us to sing, to harmonize, and to recognize every Beatles song ever written.¹ Don’t tell her I said this, but I kind of wish she had homeschooled us–she’s so educated and so interesting and knows so much more about so many things than I do.²

Almost as much as learning she taught me to love teaching. I remember thinking, when my little brother was just 4, that the best present I could give my mother was teaching him to read. When that failed, I recorded my voice reading Winnie the Pooh on a stack of cassettes to give him for his fifth birthday. My mother had taught me, after all, how important it is to read to a child. And if she wasn’t reading to us, she was telling us stories. Old family stories, over and over again, stories she made up about a good witch, fairy tales or fables. You may have noticed from this blog that I can’t make a point without telling a story. You have my mother to thank for that.

My mother taught me to love books and specifically to love books more than the movies made from them. To this day I loathe Disney’s Winnie the Pooh and I look with disdain at the Julie Andrews Mary Poppins. She made books the consummate treat, a prize for good grades or a bribe to keep us quiet on road trips. We were raised to read voraciously because what else would one do? What was life without books? It would be like life without etymology or analysis or love–empty.

My mother raised responsible children. We got allowances from a young age but only if we were willing to perform a list of chores. If we tired of a certain chore, we could only quit if a sibling would switch with us. And even being handed money was an educational experience. See, when I got $5 a week, I only ever saw $4. Before I even got the money, 10% went to charity and 10% went to savings. I only ever counted on 80% of my earnings and it’s the same today. When a little old lady on the street hands me $20 to support my ministry, I pull out a notecard and add $2 to the tally of what I have to give away. We were always taught to give first, to save second, and to spend only what’s necessary. To this day, I call my mother when I need financial advice. Even before I google, I call her.

My parents have always been supportive of their children, whatever we wanted to do, although not entirely without reservations. The year that I decided that I wanted to be a cheerleader instead of playing soccer, my mother made me write an essay about why I wanted to be a cheerleader. I also had to express in that essay that I understood that this choice was irreversible and that if allowed to cheer I would not be able to quit midseason or to play soccer as well. I was seven. But I wrote the essay and when I hated cheerleading and wanted to put on pads and play football with the boys, my mother didn’t even say, “I told you so” when driving me to cheer practice anyway. She let me make my own choice–and then let me live with it.

My mother didn’t just let us be ourselves, she rejoiced when we were ourselves. She wasn’t even embarrassed by us when she really, by all rights, should have been. Like the time that we went to watch her in a spelling bee.³ My sister and I acted like wild animals, literally howling and barking when she spelled words correctly. My mother just laughed as everybody around us looked entirely uncomfortable and rather confused.

So when I moved to Harlem for a summer at 18, my mother supported me. When I gave away everything I owned to join the convent, my mother supported me. When I went to Palestine by myself for a month, she supported me. But more than that–she marveled at me. She didn’t harp on concerns for my safety or my future–she trusted me to do the right thing and bragged about me to all her friends. Because my mother isn’t just proud of her children, she’s in awe of us; a love like that makes you feel as though you really can do anything.

See, my father loves his children blindly. No matter what we do, he thinks we are better at it than anybody else has ever been. My mother loves us with her eyes wide open. She sees the good in us and magnifies it. Despite being wildly intelligent and talented herself, she doesn’t feel the need to elevate herself. Instead, she calls me to ask theology questions or my brother to ask about grammar. Never mind that she’s been writing and editing longer than we’ve been alive, she defers to his judgment because she knows he’s right. Never mind that I might never have known Christ if not for her, she lets me lead. She trusts my sister’s musicality and my little brother’s knowledge of politics above her own even though those are both places where she excels. She’s told me again and again that the thing she is most pleased about in her life is the fact that each of her children is better than her at something she loves. It takes a true mother to rejoice in being surpassed.

I spend a lot of time talking about the importance of a father’s love for his daughter. But a mother like mine will change your life. She taught me to be strong but compassionate, to be convicted but open. My unabashedly pro-life Democrat feminist of a mother taught me not to swallow an ideology hook, line, and sinker but to question and seek truth, even if it meant raised eyebrows and accusations and a lifetime of not fitting in. And while I rebelled against her faith when I was young–and then rebelled against her approach to faith when I came to Christ–it was my mother who showed me what it meant to be a woman of prayer. If she had been any different, who knows where I’d be? I needed her to be Christian so that I could run from that and to be not-so-Catholic so I could embrace orthodoxy once I stopped running. And when I look at her now, how she’s submitted again and again to reason and truth and sometimes just to authority when all her instincts were crying out against it–well, I begin to wish I was a little more like her in matters of faith. My mother is a faithful Catholic in every way not because she wanted to be but because she loved God more than she loved herself.

Sometimes I forget how much mothers matter because it’s so easy to take mine for granted. I never had to fight for my mother’s approval. I never had to wonder what she thought of me because my mother has told me since the day I was born just how fabulous she thinks I am. My strong, brilliant, compassionate mother doesn’t just love me because I’m hers, she loves me because I’m me, which must mean I’m something special. And she loves me so completely that I’ve never questioned it.

As I wander about the country doing my hobo thing, I’m often asked what my parents think of this life I lead. The first time someone asked, I was confused. “Well they’re my parents,” I said. “So they think it’s awesome.” You know you’re doing something very, very right when it doesn’t even occur to your kids that you wouldn’t be proud of them.

So here’s to my mom, who loves me so hard that I can’t imagine being unloved. Here’s to my mom, who believes in me even when the world thinks I’m nuts. Here’s to my mom who taught me to love books and music and words and Christ. Here’s to my mom who can’t help but support her kids–even when it means challenging them in ways that may tick them off. Because my mom isn’t about feel-good love. She loves in a turning-over-tables, weeping-for-your-pain, going-joyfully-to-the-cross kind of way. I hope you’re as blessed in your mother as I am in mine.

P.S. NOW who’s your favorite child?

1. The answer to, “Kids, who sings this song?” was always “The Beatles” unless it was very obviously The Beach Boys. [↩]
2. Of course, I probably would have pitched an enormous fit to lose out on all-day socializing in favor of being better-educated, but still. [↩]
3. Which, in retrospect, is rather strange. Who has adult spelling bees? [↩]