Though the church can sometimes wound deeply because it is made of people, it is also the place where I have found the most healing. I often speak about the Church, the community, and the many people who have poured into my life—teachers, coaches, and families who helped me navigate trauma and pain. They opened their homes to me, offered encouragement when I felt like giving up, and reminded me I was not alone. But I rarely talk about the woman who reflected goodness in the most personal and intimate ways—the woman who loved me from the very beginning, enough to bring me into this world and raise me for as long as she was able: my mom.
From ages twelve to eighteen, I lived apart from my mom in several foster homes. She has suffered, and continues to struggle, with many mental illnesses, which made our relationship incredibly challenging at times. Because of these difficulties, many people view my mom negatively. I remember once posting on Facebook about the sacrificial love my mom has shown me, and someone responded angrily, asking, “How could she be a sacrificial mom if she let her daughter grow up in foster care?” I felt sad for that person. It baffled me how quickly people can judge, lacking compassion or understanding of the full story.
Birth mothers often carry the weight of criticism, yet they are quietly heroic. They love their children enough to recognize when they cannot provide the life their child deserves, and in many ways, choosing their child’s well-being over their own is an act of courage. My mom embodied that heroism. She brought me into the world amid extreme hardship: I was conceived in the shadow of abuse, my biological father passed before I was born, and both of my mom’s parents had recently died, leaving her alone in a city she barely knew. Yet, she said to me, “As soon as I heard your heartbeat and saw you on the ultrasound, I knew I loved you.” Even in the midst of her struggles, she chose life for me, she chose sacrifice, and she chose love.
Many might say my life has been far from ideal—marked by abuse, neglect, foster homes, and PTSD—but what life is truly perfect? I am endlessly grateful for the life God has given me, a life that exists because my mom chose to birth me. I receive much recognition for surviving the odds of foster care, but that praise cannot exist without the shame my mom endures for not being the “ideal” mother. To me, she is my ideal.
I genuinely believe my mom has always given everything she could, even with the weight of her mental illness. She may not be found sitting in a church pew, yet I see glimpses of Christ in her life: a woman who suffers, who has been humiliated, but who continues to endure, give, and love with all she has—for the life of another. Her love is not perfect, but it is real, sacrificial, and profound.
