Don't Listen to Mom!

Today is Mothers' Day in many countries, a time when we think about our own moms and everything that they've done for us. It's the loving, positive, and encouraging things they've said and done that are lauded. But what if your mom wasn't that kind of mother? Or what if she meant well, but something went badly wrong? What do you do with Mothers' Day then? And the bigger question: What do you do with your relationship with your mom? There's a popular meme on social media right now saying, "If you could go back and tell your younger self something in just three words, what would you say?". While there are lots of helpful things I could tell the younger me, I know exactly what I would say: "Mom was wrong." Mom's terrible advice, though well intentioned, was dead wrong and following it changed my life.

I grew up in a culture and a religion that was quite conservative and traditional; both held up marriage as the epitome of what a woman could achieve and her crowning glory (having children was a given in this understanding of a woman's role). Unmarried women were to be looked down on, or at least pitied. A woman could certainly have a job, but gave this up once she got married; careers were for the poor woman who couldn't find a husband or couldn't have children. The purpose for going to college, if you went, was to find "a good husband" who could provide comfortably for you and your children. A woman CHOOSING to stay single was almost a contradiction in terms because a woman without a man was incomplete. This is the programming that was put in my young brain that I unquestioningly accepted because it was handed down from adults and this was the way of the world.

Coming from this background, my mother told me often that she wanted to see me married by the time I was 25 because (according to her) "After 25, all the good men are gone."

That advice, though well intentioned, is the worst thing she ever told me, and following it changed my life.

Being a dutiful daughter, I listened to and followed it. I went to college, met a lot of likely guys, and popped out the other end with a B.A. I found a teaching position in a rural school in Iowa, and settled down to wait until I got married. At 22 I was young and hopeful, but by 23 I still had no ring on my finger and the door of opportunity was closing. I got back together with an earnest guy I'd dated causally in college, he proposed when I was 24, and we got married four months after my 25th birthday - SCORE!

But there was a problem: I didn't love him. I liked him and we were good friends, but I didn't love him. The man I really loved was back in Germany, loving and wanting me, but he wasn't a Christian, ergo I thought I couldn't have a life with him. I had to choose a man who believed like I did, and somehow everything would work out. I took a risk on someone I knew I could get along with because 25 was looming, and after that there was NO HOPE. I'd be a spinster for the rest of my life.

Mom wasn't pleased with my choice of husband, either. You see, Mom and God had a very chatty relationship, and (according to Mom), over coffee one morning, God had told her who the specific man I was supposed to marry was, and my husband was NOT The One. (He had also been kind enough to tell Mom about the guys my sisters were supposed to marry; none of us did.) She predicted a life of misery for me for "not following God's Plan" for my life, and if I'd just waited a little while longer, Mr. Right would come to his senses and see that what God had put in front of him - but what was done was done, and we needed to make the best of it.

With these encouraging words, my life with my liked-but-not-loved husband began.

We worked in our careers, bought a house, then a bigger one, lost a baby, but had three more children, were active in our church, and somewhere along the way I learned to love the man I'd married. I had what I thought was a good, successful life according to the standards I'd been raised with. My family had come to accept my husband; my mom had even learned to like him. Things were working out as they were supposed to, as I had believed they would.

Until they didn't.

One summer afternoon, my older daughter (then 15) asked if we could have lunch together - alone. Over kung pao chicken at her favorite restaurant, she told me that her dad had sexually abused her when she was 13. She'd finally managed to end it, but had kept silent for two years. But her younger sister was just getting into the age range my husband was so susceptible to; and he hadn't abused just our daughter - there were others.

My good, upright, pillar-of-the-church husband was a pedophile.

Things moved very fast after that. I learned that for years I'd been living a lie without knowing it; the divorce was almost an afterthought.

All this happened years ago; since my divorce, I've learned so much, grown so much, and discovered I could take care of my children and myself all by myself. That has been the most empowering thing of all; I DON'T need a man to live and be happy.

But, somehow, a certain man in Germany has come back into my life, too...

Was Mom's advice bad or wrong? Yes - and no. I have three wonderful, kind, caring, decent human beings for children, and even a couple of amazing grandbabies. My life is in a very good place right now, as is my head and my heart. Would any of this happened without Mom's awful advice? I would spare my daughter and the others the stuff of nightmares, but would I actually change most of it? I honestly don't know. I can't imagine a life without my kids and grandkids now, plus I'm back with the man I always loved.

My advice to my own daughters: take some risks, take care of yourself, trust your gut, don't be afraid to love, and it's YOUR life - live it as YOU think is right.

Mom was wrong in this piece of advice she gave me, but after looking at what has happened and how I have changed, maybe in some strange, weird, unfathomable way, Mom may have been right - sort of...