She Always Thought Mom Chose To Leave

So much in Marcella’s life had changed, but a gift from her mom brought back a sense of normalcy. She didn’t understand why her mom had left, or if she had left her on purpose. Her mom was in prison, and nobody would tell Marcella when she’d be getting out. All she knew was Mom was not coming home this Christmas.

But her mom still sent a gift—thanks to Prison Fellowship Angel Tree^® and the generosity of a local church.

And that gift meant a connection. Marcella and her mom had a long journey ahead of them before true reconciliation could take place. But the journey began with an angel hung in a tree and a present wrapped beneath it.

When Marcella was very young, she remembers having a beautiful house, her own room, and a mother who was trying to provide the best life she could for her two kids. But that all changed when her mother went to prison on a drug-related charge.

Nine-year-old Marcella and her younger brother were quickly shuffled off to their aunt’s house who was also caring for Marcella’s two cousins and grandmother. Marcella went from having her own room to sharing one with her grandmother. She grieved not just the change of her physical surroundings but the loss of her family, as well.

“I didn’t understand,” Marcella says about her mom not coming home year after year. “Every year it was like, ‘I’m coming home this year,’ but then, ‘No, I’m not going to be able to come.’”

Her mother would end up spending nine years in prison. Marcella felt abandoned and unloved. But one year, a spark of hope came to her when her aunt brought her to church, and she saw what was on the Christmas tree.

The gift Marcella received met a need emotionally as much as it did practically. She remembers getting brand name clothing.

“Right after Christmas break, when you go back to school everybody’s rocking their new clothes that their parents bought,” Marcella says. “Even though we didn’t have our parents, it felt good to fit in and know that we have a nice pair of shoes, or we got a new jacket.”

Her aunt made minimum wage, worked overtime, and was putting herself through college. Money was tight. The church’s generosity blessed Marcella as much as it did her aunt.

“It helped my aunt out tremendously,” Marcella says. “The pressure wasn’t on her to not only be our caregiver but also try to come up with these things.”

The gifts also helped keep Marcella’s connection with her mother alive, but she still struggled with feeling abandoned. She felt like her mother had chosen to leave.

“I think the enemy just had me [believe] she did it on purpose,” she says.

The feelings intensified when her mother, who was Colombian, was deported upon her release from prison.

“It took me many years to forgive my mom and really have a good relationship,” she says. “It was nothing but the Lord that healed that part [of me] and showed me how to give grace to her.”

Marcella’s aunt always made sure she was in church growing up. When Marcella had a child of her own, she wanted her son to grow up in church too. But her faith didn’t extend much beyond Sunday services. She still partied on Friday and Saturday and made a lot of mistakes.

“I had it wrong there,” she says. “However, His grace always covered me through all my craziness.”

It wasn’t until her late 20s when she began struggling with anxiety and experiencing panic attacks that she reached out to God for something more. She had tried managing the anxiety herself and had even gone to counseling, but nothing was working.

“God, I don’t know what this is,” Marcella finally prayed. “But I need you to take this from me. I don’t know what else to do, but here I am.”

He answered her prayer, and for the first time, she experienced the true peace of God. But this wasn’t all that God wanted to teach her. For decades Marcella thought of herself as abandoned. Neither her stepfather nor her mother were ever really there in the ways she needed them. She figured if they didn’t love her, then nobody would. Then one day she felt like she heard God ask her a question.

“Did I ever abandon you?” she sensed God asking her.

“No,” she prayed back. “You didn’t.”

“Then stop telling yourself and people that you were abandoned because I never abandoned you,” she felt Him say in response.

Marcella calls God her Father now. She never had a dad who was there. But God was always there. Through it all, even in her loneliest moments, He was by her side.

In time Marcella began seeing her mother in a different light. But it was her aunt who prompted her to visit her mother in Colombia.

“You don’t have to be her best friend,” her aunt said. “You don’t have to do everything that she says, but you do have to honor her.”

As a Christian, her aunt spoke about the Bible’s commands to honor one’s parents. Her aunt felt like visiting her mother would be an important step both for Marcella’s own healing process and in living out her faith.

Marcella used to visit her mother in prison when she was a child. Even when her mom was deported to Colombia, they still kept in touch with phone calls and video chats. But they didn’t always get along.

“Every little argument would turn into, ‘Well, you’re the one that left!’” she says.

But Marcella finally agreed to fly to Colombia. It was on the last day of the visit that her mother said something that brought both of them to tears.

“I’m sorry,” her mother said. “Forgive me for not being the mother that I should have been to you.”

It was those words—without any defense or excuse or explanation—that Marcella had always needed to hear. They let her finally forgive her mother.

Marcella’s husband is a pastor, and together they now lead their church, The Gates of Zion Worship Center, in Winston Salem, North Carolina. Shortly after stepping into this role, Marcella decided to sign their church up for Angel Tree.

“I wanted to do something to give back around Christmastime with the church,” she says. “I know that it’s a small community, and they don’t have a lot of money, and a lot of them are in broken homes themselves, but I still wanted to give back something.”

The church served over 50 children in their first year. They delivered the presents to all of the families.

“We were able to pray with some of the grandmas and aunts,” she says. “It was a double ministry right there, from giving gifts to the kids and then being able to minister to the guardians.”

Marcella and her church may never know the full extent of the impact they’re having on these families. Her own journey of reconciliation with her mother took over 20 years. But she does know for many families, that journey begins with a gift.

“My hope is that the child just feels loved,” she says. “I know that materialistic things cannot bring back Mom or Dad, but it is a season of giving.”