When I was 13, a little series called the Twilight Saga took over the world. As most of my female peers, I was obsessed. Yes, I know. Twilight is a joke now. But it did really change my life. I read all four books in a week. I bought the Hot Topic T-shirts. I debated if I was Team Edward or Team Jacob (if you’re really curious, #teamswitzerland). I did all the trivial things that you probably associate with that era of pop culture.
But it went deeper than that. Specifically, I was obsessed with the turmoil Edward felt of being a traditional Christian and a Vampire at the same time. I was captivated by a character who had this need to consume his beloved, quite literally, but wrestling with the fate of his mortality from a religious stand point. I was rattled by the idea that he could believe one thing about himself to be absolute, when he knew first hand about Jesus. In my 13 year old head, how could he think he was going to hell when Jesus forgives everything?
For me, it was the most honest view of Christianity I’d ever seen. Odd, I know, but I was a 13 year old church girl, remember? Right in the target age range for this saga that took the world by storm. I began having deep, Twilight driven conversations with my mother about Christianity and love and all the other themes of this series. It seems shallow now, but trust me. It was very intuitive for a 13 year old.
Earlier this week, when the news of Midnight Sun was announced, I reverted right back to my obsession with this story and the conversations they sparked with my mom. I was reminiscing with a friend about the love we had for this series.
In mid conversation, I frantically said “I need to text my mom! She loved it as much as I did!”
“You’re mom read the Twilight series?”
Well...yes. But not for the reason my 13 year old self did.
“She read the entire series because someone told me I was too young to read it and it was about a toxic relationship.”
When this happened, my mother was shocked and appalled by this. She had allowed me to read it, and it was no one else’s business. So what did she do? Read the entire series. Mostly to make sure they were wrong, and if they were, to have specific reasons why.
“So then she argued with them. I wonder where I get it.”
My friend sarcastically stated “Geez I wonder. From your outspoken father or your rebel mom?”
I can’t deny that. They are both pretty awesome. My dad is big hearted and brought the comedy, but my mom was always the rebel that kept us together. But not in the motorcycle riding form of the word, but in the way she would fight, teach us to fight for ourselves, and through her honesty. And she did pass it on to me, for sure. I mean... I did write a letter to a Christian teen girls magazine about their article on why Twilight is a horrible example for teen girls. I told them why that was problematic for ministering to teen girls. I even included page numbers where religious themes are noted. Some say nerdy. I prefer rebellious, as my friend called it.
There’s no denying I got it from my momma. If you know Sharon Carter, you know that is her through and through.
But seriously, at 13, my mom loving something as much as I did was incredible. Did your mom stay up at night discussing the tragedy of Edward being immortal and wanting to go to heaven? Did she have the Black family tree memorized better than you did? Did you discuss how admirable it was of Edward to want to wait for marriage, for fear of adding more sin to Bella’s life when she became a vampire too?
I think NOT!
At 13, this was the coolest thing my mom could do. At 24, I know this wasn’t even close to the unbelievable traits she had inside.
It sounds strange to say this after bragging about how awesome she is for loving Twilight, but the older I get, the more alike we become. It is uncanny, sometimes. I truly believe it’s because she gave me the best example of what a woman, mother, and human should be. She is the most rawly honest person I know, and rarely apologizes for it. She fights for the underdog, and rallies for justice. She finds humor in reality, and knows there is no point in caring about the superficial. While she thinks she’s easily angered, it’s very rarely without evidence. A long list of evidence that she’s researched and taken notes on. She sticks straight to the point, and thinks sugar coating is for wusses. And somehow with all that angsty rebellion, she still has a compassionate, open, loving heart. She’s the kind of rebel I want to be. Honestly, sometimes, I think she’s the kind of rebel Jesus was.
She sacrificed to bring that desire for justice into fruition, whether it was defending her young teen daughter for loving Twilight, or now defending disabled youth from the harsh realities of this world.
She taught me from a young age that I could do whatever I worked for. I was born when she was 20, nine months and 15 days after her wedding, right in the middle of her college career. She took me, in my car seat, to her community college classes. When I was in fifth grade, she graduated with her bachelors in education, after allowing my brother and I to be the center of her focus during our childhood. She taught me that women have the power to be strong and brave, no matter what surprises God throws at you.
She didn’t just teach me that, she did everything in her power to protect me from those who believed the alternative.
The same year I became obsessed with Edward and Bella’s romance, I came home crying about a boy at school, who had scolded me for saying women could be ministers. He also informed me that all democrats were going to hell. As someone who was taught to love everyone, and that everyone had the opportunity to know Jesus, my whole world was turned on it’s head. Growing up an opened minded Christian in the Bible Belt is fun, y’all.
She calmly sat me down, with this drained look on her face. It was like this was the moment she had been dreading for 13 years. She sighed, as she explained why he would say those things. She read to me the verses the boy was referring to about women. She spoke of the arguments she had with the church leaders in her youth group, for just asking questions. She told me about rallying behind my aunt as she went to seminary, despite the reprimand of others. In this moment, she told me something I never knew and she never wanted me to find out: even Christians were fighting against me. As the conversation came to a close, she fiercely said, “Esther, there is no male or female in the eyes of God. That’s in Galatians. That is in the Bible, too. The only thing you have to do to go to heaven is accept him. It may not be easy, but you do what he has called you to do, no matter what anyone says.”
This changed everything. I had a lot of questions now. Through our new bond of understanding our views were radical in the Bible Belt, my mom and I began staying up late nightly talking about anything. I would sit on the edge of her bed for hours, just as I did when discussing Twilight. She let me discuss and ask questions about anything I could think of. She never told me to stop talking or leave her alone. She never told me what to believe, but gave me facts and cold hard truths. We told our stories over several hundred nights. It turned into an at least once a week, if not a nightly, routine, until I moved out last year.
During these times I learned:
When she was a young girl, she and my aunt got in a fight, as siblings do. My mom got so angry, that she marched outside and sat on a picnic table to pout. When she sat, she sat on a wasp. She took this as a sign from God to cool it, and she’s been working on her anger ever since.
When she was 17, she spent her spare time working with a program teaching sex ed to other teenagers. She had been touched by a video she’d seen of an unplanned pregnancy, and did not just talk about it. She ran to an organization called AAA Pregnancy Services, now known as Choices Pregnancy Center, to help those young mothers. Later in the conversation, Dad came in to tell us about the time he went to visit her at work. He opened a book in the lobby, just to see pages full of genitalia ravaged by STDs. He threw it down and is still scarred. We all laughed so hard! This is when I discovered that my mom would truly talk about anything, even the hard, and sometimes disgusting.
When I was young, she worked at the Domestic Violence shelter. She would take me with her, sometimes, and that’s why I remember friends that I only saw in a living room of a house that I couldn’t remember. While working there, one of the moms told a story about putting her children to sleep in their clothes, just incase they needed to escape in the middle of the night. I learned then that this is why my brother and I always went to bed in pajamas, as a reminder to her that we were blessed.
In the 90s, when she heard about a trip of high schoolers going to Canada from all over the state of Georgia, she heard God say she had to go. And when she was introduced to the group of peers, and my dad hugged her, she knew right then why it was so urgent. Fun fact: I also learned that she was not the only one who had their eye on my dad, and she would pettily champion the other girls because she knew what the ending of the story was. Now we joke about who my other mom could have been, even though I know it could never be anyone but her.
I could write a novel about the conversations my mom and I have had sitting in her bed late into the night. Sometimes with my brother and Dad accompanying.
Funny conversations.
Hard conversations.
Screaming conversations.
Tearful conversations.
Some of my favorite conversations.
Some conversations I wouldn’t relive if my life depended on it.
Even married at 24, I will still go sit in her bed to talk about the stuff that no one understands besides her. Politics, religion, pop culture, work life, married life, family drama, you name it. I promise we’ve discussed it.
It wasn’t until recently that I realized not everyone has this kind of relationship with their mom. Obviously I knew there were bad mom’s who didn’t talk to their kids, but I had no idea that there were mom’s who didn’t want to be honest with their children.
“You never had the talk with your mom and laughed about your dad seeing pictures of herpes ridden genitalia?”
“Your family didn’t have raw conversations about your feelings?!”
“You’re telling me that you have NEVER calmly and healthily told your family members you disagreed with them? About ANYTHING?!”
No. Gentle, delicate, or diplomatic are not necessarily the words I would use to describe my mother. But she cultivated honesty and strength in our lives in a way that was healthy, factual, comedic, and always out of love.
Now, I’m no nonsense about what is truly right and wrong. I am open and vocal with the people around me about how I feel. I fight for the underdog because of her example. All because of those conversations where I sat on the edge of the bed, and discussed the important, the insignificant, and above all, our truths.
So thank you, Stephanie Meyer for creating the saga that created the series of honest, late night conversations. Without Twilight, I may have never realized how wonderful being best friends with your mom really is.
I love you, mom. Happy Mother’s Day.