Where did she come from?

I never imagined myself walking beside a teen daughter. I think, with her being my last child, I just figured I would step into the next season without much consideration. I’d been mothering for a long while already.

However, it really is different than raising teen sons. I was a teen daughter once.

And there lies the rub.

And it’s because of my past experiences that this role as the mother is problematic for my sometimes troubled heart. Actually, I have discovered how faint of heart I can be in the thick of our arguments, in the pathetic reactions that escape me.

I often long for the sweetness of her younger years, and then battle through our conflict with less grace and unnecessary emotion. I am reminded how much maturing I still have to do in the dual against a daughter who might just be more mature than me. No joke.

When I step back and observe her reactions to this world, I realize that she’s grown so far past how I was at her age, and she is everything I wanted to be at her age, too. It frightens me that she might have a lacking mother in parenting. I remember far too well the grief of broken moments from my own teen years, and the self-doubt implanted in my core. Even now, I find myself striving to be accepted for who I am because I believe my flaws are too much. Deep down, I don’t trust I am enough. Actually, I think I know it. Deep down, I will never measure up past my mistakes. Especially among those who’ve known me longest and have tended to confirm as much.

Bitter echos of “Where did you come from?” threaten to materialize on my lips in the most heated moments with my daughter. While I hear myself demand respect and create the perfect storm of a broken moment, I haven’t gone so far as to cement the self-doubt with that shame-filled question, “Where did you come from?”

Inflicting shame is my greatest fear as a parent; a boundary that I dare not cross. I know the consequences of it. I don’t want my daughter to think she’s lost her acceptance because of that rhetorical dagger, “Where did you come from?”

Yet, can a mother ask that question with wonderment and joy and awe of the daughter estranged from her mother’s weaknesses?

Where did you come from?

Can a mother be so very glad that her daughter came from her and flourished in a way so different than her that the daughter is nothing like her at all—and that is a good thing?

When I see my daughter’s willingness to step into spaces regardless of who she knows and who knows her, the 14-year-old girl within me is shocked by such autonomy.

When I witness my daughter’s compassion for someone hurting, and her fierce desire to act, she’s bolder than I ever was.

And when I am reprimanded by my daughter because I speak critically or judge another, I can’t even correct her—because she is right. I was never taught to rebuke the vice of criticism or judgement. That vice was a way of life in my own early years. And it haunts me still. But my daughter has no tolerance for such a way.

Where did she come from?

I am so thankful she didn’t come from the worst part of me. I am thankful for the grace of God allowing her to grow into a better human than little Angie.

My daughter is not me, and I am so glad she isn’t.