The lessons I learned from my mother came only after my life turned upside-down.

My mother is a strong woman of faith, who raised 6 children by herself the past 7 years after her husband died suddenly. But that was only after 2 years she stood strong next to my father while he spiraled down a well of mental instability. While she was able to keep the rising insanity away from her younger children (the eldest knew everything), she was unable to hide the crushing hopelessness when, at last, my father was at rest.

My mother is far from perfect. She raised my sisters and I in church, though God was far from our hearts. She kept the house tidy and took care of us when we were sick and cooked for us when we were hungry, but never taught us (particularly us younger ones) how to do these things for ourselves. She would drive from sun-up to sun-down, getting us from school to swimming practice to ballet lessons to piano and violin lessons to soccer practice to gymnastics to ice-skating to robotics competitions to the library to the gardens… and now we’ve grown so far apart, with our eyes focused on our goals, that we often ask ourselves if we know how to be a family. She’s now alone in California, taking care of my younger brother, the last born, who doesn’t know how to respect his mother and drives her to tears more often than not.

I didn’t think I had anything to learn from my mom. I and my siblings all attend(ed) Ivy League-level schools. The Nigerian culture that you grew up among, we grew up with it on the side. It was the ketchup to the fries of our lives, giving us distance from the black-American standard whenever it was convenient (or delicious). It was also the force that drove us to excel in school, as well as create more ways in which we couldn’t understand my parents. Intellectually speaking, we couldn’t relate with our mother the way we could with our father. And so watching her dive headfirst into depression, hearing her say that she often wished that she could join my father in his grave (if it wasn’t for us children), made it harder to believe that she had anything to teach me.

Only now, two years after graduating and going through the hardest times in my life, have I seen that there is truly something to learn from someone who has been on the bottom for so long.

1. No greater love has any woman than this — that she would continue to live for her children
2. It is never too late to change. It took her 6 years, but I’ve watched my mom grow to accept and thrive in her current state, becoming someone I’ve grown to admire, respect, and seek for wisdom in a lot of areas.
3. Honoring your parents is not a matter of agreeing with them. It’s a matter of understanding that there is so much that they’ve gone through for your sake that you will never know until you go through it yourself. And by that time, it may be too late.
4. God is real, and He is a Father to the fatherless, Husband to the widow, and a rewarder for those who diligently seek Him.
5. There are many great loves in this world, but none surpasses the truest love of a mother. Because no matter how much you spit on her, ignore her, turn against her, disrespect and undermine her, she will never forget the years she nursed you at her breast, the times when she watched you play full of carefree spirit on the playground, the birthdays she celebrated for you before you realized there was any reason why the day of your birth was special. If I know nothing else about my mother, I know that she loves us.
6. And finally, no matter how heavy the world and the pain becomes, she will never break. Not by her own strength, but by the strength of her love for her children given to her by God Himself.

My mother is now old, and has been old for years. Yet she works too long and sacrifices too much to be in all of our lives, not just her son’s. But now she has a joy I’ve never seen before, and I enjoy talking with her on the phone, a task that used to be a chore. God is changing her, just as He is changing me. I’m so grateful that the turns in my life gave me the perspective I now have of who my mom is, and I pray that I’ll get the chance to take care of her, and to see her finally at peace.

I’m glad that you’ve seen and learned these lessons while you’re still young. Continue to love and honor your mom. For that, you will be blessed.

-T.