Seventy times seven

My relationship with my mother has changed a lot over the years since I became an adult. She's been my best friend, and my biggest adversary. She's been my champion and my nay-sayer. She's been someone I admired and someone that I felt sorry for.
But through it all we've always maintained a relationship of some kind.

It's becoming harder and harder for me to maintain this relationship. My mother has always had this habit of feeling slighted in some way and then lashing out. First she sits on it and lets it fester until it becomes this big, huge dragon in her mind. A fire breathing thing that threatens her very existence and, apparently, the only way to slay this dragon (a.k.a. me) is to slap it down with some well placed barbs to knock the wind out of it.

I used to fire right back - indignant and disbelieving that she would SAY such a thing to me! I didn't do or say anything to deserve this! I have learned, over the years, that in my mom's world 'Anything you do or say will be held against you' - tomorrow. It's exhausting.

Taking a step back has helped. Oh, I still write the initial email - I just don't send it. I tell my best friend Cyndi everything I WANT to say or I tell Rob, but I never send it. Because then THAT would be my fault, too. If I just wait her out then she will send a follow up email telling me she's sorry. Well, not sorry for what she SAID but sorry for the way she said it. But it's never her fault. It's always mine. I'm supposed to be apologetic and feel bad and take whatever I get dished out but the tables can never be turned unless she comes to it on her own.

My mother has become quite erratic lately. She has trouble holding down a job. She has trouble maintaining relationships. She finds fault with everyone, including her self, but can never see her part in the deterioration of her relationships and jobs. She self-medicates until we're worried about her, then she detoxes and decides to stop taking ALL of her meds until the cycle begins all over again.

My mother hurts me with her words. She wounds me very deeply. I can't walk away, though, because she is my mom and my kids adore their Nay-Nay. And I love her. I'm really trying to treat her how I want to be treated. What I keep saying in my head over and over after she emails me with my latest whipping is 'Seventy times seven'. 'Seventy times seven'.

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?" Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. (Matthew 18:21-22)

I joke that I'm on number 400 so I only have 90 more to go but I don't know how much of a joke it really is. Some days I don't know how many more times I can do this. It doesn't hurt any less with each additional time.

Perhaps I should thank her, though, for helping me to learn how I do NOT want to make my own daughters feel. I never, ever want my daughters to feel this way about me. Or my sons - any of my children - ever. I never want to have to come back and say, 3 days later, that I'm sorry that I always hurt them while saying in a public arena, for everyone to see, how wonderful they are.

But mostly? I just want her to love me the way I love my kids.