When they shut you out…and what Mama says to do about it.

Mama had told me about The Teenager Phase long before I reached it. We read hints of it in books, heard other Moms talking about the symptoms of this phase and how to reach their kids who seemed to draw up and in, further and further from plain sight. Sure, they could be standing there, but they seemed so far off. They were cold and distant from the warm children those mothers knew them as. It was a dark, mysterious cloud I determined against from the time I heard about it. I would never be like that.

Around twelve or thirteen, I began to feel a strange pull of sensations.  Curious and almost intrigued as to where they'd lead me or what they meant, I gave them their head.  They were feelings of suppression from the higher ups - Mama, Daddy, Preachers. They were the desire to Be apart from what defined me. Apart from my upbringing, apart from the people associated with me. During this time, I felt much embarrassment - discovered the powers of that force for the worst, and found myself being ashamed at my family, my clothes, my hair, body and church. I wanted freedom. I wanted to be someone important. None of this, I was convinced, could be found in what I'd grown up in. My parents, but my mother, especially, was holding me back. She'd keep me from experiencing my life to its fullest pleasures, and for this, I felt resentment building. I gave these thoughts their lead, letting them pull me on in whatever direction they willed. What I didn't realize - or want to realize - was that they were not leading me anywhere; they were a wedge in the form of "Freedom", which was being driven between my relationships, and especially with Mama.



My life grew, changed, molded. God got a hold of me and broke a very hard heart. Still, remnants of a deep seed kept their hold, as they always will when a person is not committed to rooting them out.
I kept a coldness toward Mama for years. Only in the past few years have I worked through it, growing more and more in awe of the person my selfishness kept me blind from seeing. That curtain is drawn back more each time as my eyes are continually accustoming to the amazing person she is. She teaches me many things on a daily basis. I've written her words in my book, I've asked her advice, I keep studying what makes her great.  Feverishly I write and rehearse and think of what she's taught, because there is much more to learn from her than I can in a lifetime.

She was never one who things just came to - except for amazing balance on bicycles at 1 year old and winning the beauty pageant at 4 years old, when she would have rather have been racing around the yard and playing in mud. In high school she worked hard for good grades, to make friends and to do well. She wasn't the beauty queen, she wasn't popular to the popular kids and those good grades didn't come easily. But she was determined. Mama has always been determined. She recently told me something that has made such sense to me.  It made Mama and her ways, make sense.

"My homeroom teacher wasn't popular on his own merit, but he had a saying he kept up on his board that said, 

'They formed a circle and shut me out; 

But I formed a larger circle

And shut them in.'

 I've seen her do this over and over. Every cold look, every stiff hug I've given, every clipped answer to her compassionate, inquiring one.  Every time I've treated her without respect, been moody and unkind, I was baffled by this circle, which she quietly drew around me, then filled up with her love, her compassion and forgiveness. The thing I never figured out, was how she never treated me the way I did her. What would my life have been like if she did? How different it would be - and I would be.

Not until that day when she recently related her homeroom teacher's advice, did I realize what she's been doing all these years.  She's been shutting people in with love - no matter how many times she's shut out, she only draws the circle bigger.

If you have a Mama who's done this for you, Thank her.

If you're on the outside of the circle, be brave like she is, and draw the circle bigger.

Thank you, Mama. 

Thank you for your example.

Thank you for changing my life, one kind word, one prayer, one circle at a time.

I love you,

-g