The Secret to Forgiveness
I gave him a kiss as he walked in the door, and he leaned back to look at me, “What’s up around here lately? Something’s definitely different.” I hadn’t dared mention it, because I was pretty sure it wouldn’t stick. I hesitated, “What do you mean?” “Everything seems better like a weight’s been lifted.” And I smiled because I knew I was free.
Gaping holes from unanswered childhood questions can do a number on you. For years, I tried to fit all the puzzle pieces together. When one of your two safe people won’t share, it’s hard to gather a full picture. And it doesn’t help that the other person has already died. I caught a glimmer of the tidal wave right in front of me when I started raising my own children. So many things came back. And the gaping holes started being filled with a truth I just didn’t want to believe.
It’s hard to accept that our parents may not meet our most intimate needs - that we may not get the love we desperately need - that they may not see us or love us completely. Some people have parents who meet all those needs, but some of us don’t. It’s hard to release this feeling of being unloved.
My parents had a normal marriage with regular struggles. Women didn’t have much of a voice in the 1970’s, and my mom was no different. She was along for the ride, which for her meant following my dad, who was a dreamer. That’s code for footloose and fancy free, but maybe also irresponsible and non-communicative. My mom dealt with it by being absent sometimes. She would leave for the weekend, or live somewhere else for a while. I missed her. I was a kid and I just knew she wasn’t there. My dad’s proclivities meant we moved 11 times in 17 years and I went to 3 different high schools. No wonder she was absent.
For years though, I just couldn’t let her off the hook for what I saw as her part in all of this. I withheld love and stood in absolute judgment over her. I knew that I was supposed to forgive her, it says it right there in Matthew 6. There was no lack of trying. I just couldn’t figure out how to actually make myself do it. Forgiveness eluded me over and over.
In 2015, I found myself in the book of Job when God stopped me on some verses. I was excited because I knew He was about to teach me something. For the next year, God kept me in this word and He revealed a mystery to me. The mystery that all of us are made in His image and what that means to Him. He showed me clearly that when I look at other people, I should know that His eyes are looking back at me. His image is in all of us. It isn’t something we try to muster up with our good behavior, it just is. In the most gracious, patient way, God helped me to see that my mom was made in God’s image, too. This might seem like the most basic, obvious thing to you, but it wasn’t for me. Incredibly, I could see her, in her imperfection, in her faults, in her failings, in her outspokenness, in her brokenness. I could see her as whole because she was made in His image.
I could see how much God loved her for the first time in my life. And I could see how we were the same. Just two women in need of a Savior.
So, I became free, because He made me free. And God, in His gracious lovingkindness, brought me to forgiveness just a few months before my mom got sick with stage four cancer. We lived the last six months of her life together, genuinely at peace with each other. We had joy and love and hope in our home in the darkest time of our life. I know this isn’t everyone’s story. Sometimes we figure out how to forgive when the person isn’t beside us any more. My heart goes out to you friend if that’s you. Know that God’s love is deep and wide and He sees you. He makes all things new.
