I miss you, Mom...

I dreamed of my mother last night. I study myself today. I came to this passage in the book I'm currently using to explore first humiliation and then its thankful afterglow--growth:
"...we love so poorly. Why? The answer is as simple as it is profound. We refuse to come to God in our thirst [for ultimate goodness and love] by abandoning our commitment to self-protection. Instead, we read our Bible, burn our porno magazines, etc. We walk past the well of God to grab a shovel and begin digging for water in our relationships [with other humans.] How foolish! But worse, how subtly we dig our broken wells."
This is from Larry Crabb's book, Inside Out. He goes on to describe how our greatest seeming "virtues" can indeed be our most subtle means of self-protection against those things that we learned could hurt us. We don't realize we are using "virtue" for no other purpose than to avoid pain. Virtue is good, but not with that motivation. What a profoundly useful thing to consider. He uses the case study of a woman who was never beaten or molested as a child, but she also never felt truly cherished by her family. She couldn't recall a single conversation in which she felt warmly invited to share the things that mattered to her. Consequently, she went into adulthood with very efficient relationships, but none in which she would put herself out in a zone where she was not protecting her heart. Now after some time in counseling, this woman is more in touch with how disappointing life can be, for that is the inevitable consequence of accepting spirit-thirst for those deepest, un-meetable desires a fortunate few discover in this life. Still, even with that disappointment, she is also getting the gift that comes with it: she is developing the courage to experience more meaningful love and more purity in her purposes for relationship.
Two examples of "good" well-diggers that are on my mind today:
Last night, we watched the Constant Gardener. It, too, touched this theme from the perspective of a woman who displayed willingness to expend her self, her reputation, her very life. Self-protection was the last thing on her mind, and it showed in a rainbow of examples. Her husband grew into such a mind-set as well. He had the courage to believe in her and in his knowledge of her, no matter what others might say. His own self-protection might have caused him to abandon what he discovered was her mission. He might have even abandoned the honor of her very memory before he discovered her mission. Rather, he uncovered the truth and "completed" her work, and in so doing, completed her self...a noble example I think of what husband and wife being flesh of each other's flesh and bone of each other's bone really means.
The second example I find in another relationship: the one I had/have with my mother. My tribute to you, Mom (although it is late, but also is as early as I had the wisdom to give it) my tribute is that you were such a person as to teach me that broken-well truth deeply. I thought I was so short-changed compared to some of the other kids who didn't have to orchestrate life's joy around a mom so wounded by her own past. But I also knew I was uniquely blessed, sitting for hours on your bed with you, late into the night, or on the back porch in the dark, talking about the most mysterious things, the depths our souls were exploring. When you died, I felt first and foremost panic at that particular loss: my exploring-soul companion. I had never known anyone who was so touched by the depths of disappointment, and yet so full of courage and faith and tenacity...and especially so full of wonder at the possibilities of what is "supposed" to be. Dreaming of you last night made me remember what we had on the good days and nights and feel less horror at what we had on the bad ones--no, I should say appreciate the meaning I now see behind the balance between the good ones and those bad ones.
I guess it is because in the dream you were again guiding me: prodding me to go ahead and take that dive in the face of confusion, pressing me to be tenacious about letting God be anything He wants to be...you were so good at inspiring that kind of faith. You were telling me how to pick up and go on when I felt I was coming to an impasse. Self-protection parading as goodness was making me stodgy, and such a thing would have never flown with you. Even now you remind me to live larger than that.