As I returned for my sophomore year of college last weekend, I had the wonderful opportunity of driving 24+ hours with my mom across the country as we hauled all of my things and my car back to school. Days before we left I was dreading the long, ticking hours of the clock as we would drive through the barren deserts of New Mexico and the symmetric plains of Oklahoma. To my surprise, the trip was hardly that. The time spent driving became valuable quality time between my mom and I. We talked for hours and viewed in awe at the diverse and breathtaking scenery of this country from our car windows. We laughed, we discussed, and we shared things about our lives that we had never told each other. My mom no longer felt like my mom anymore, but a dear friend, until of course she hugged me too tight and kissed me goodnight in our Route 66 motel room. But I enjoyed for once in my life not seeing my mom as my mom, but as my friend, and an imperfect person who at one point as felt the same things I do now, and has struggled through things I have been blessed to surpass.

When I saw my mom as rather a friend than my mother, I learned that she does not have it all together, and that is totally OK. I learned that while she always seems to be organized and level-headed, there are thousands of things whirling through her mind, just as there are in mine. I learned that she climbed many more mountains than she did swim in easy-flowing streams to get where she is now. Her life at the age I am now was impressively incredible, filled with many more responsibilities than I dare take on myself. She told me about her young and ambitious personality that motivated her through her difficult times, and that she always pursued things through her own might. If my mom wanted something, she worked hard for it, and that amazed me.

She told me quirky stories of her young adult days and remembered the first years she spent with my father. She admitted to not doing everything perfectly in the beginning, but she knew that it was all part of the process. I laughed when she told me she ordered fried chicken to her room on her wedding night then took Nyquil and passed out. I listened to her tell me stories of her hopes and dreams of one day becoming an astronaut and her deep regrets of never listening to her heart because everybody’s voices around her were too loud. She opened up about relationships she wishes she never got into and relationships she wishes she would have worked on more.

I learned about my mother’s spiritual journey not from a mother-daughter perspective, but from a raw, friend-to-friend perspective. She confessed sins she wishes she never committed and explained scars similar to ones I try to cover on myself every day. I learned that God was working in her life far before she even opened a Bible and how amazing it is that she is where she is today. Her testimony of enduring loveless relationships, self-esteem battles, and tug-o-war games with the devil astonished me as I imagine the many mountains she has had to climb without the help of God. Her turn to faith as been much like mine and that made me feel so much more connected to her than ever. The more she shared, the prouder I was of her, thinking of how faithful she is now, compared to the lost soul she described to me in her early years.

When I stopped looking at my mother as just my mom, but rather as the teenager she once was, the college student she once was, the daughter, the girlfriend, the young adult, the wife, the friend, I learned that my mom is the most valuable source of advice and love I could ever have in my life. When I stopped seeing my mom as just a mother, my eyes were opened to the amazing, brave, vicarious, and loving woman that she was, is, and will forever be.