Forgiveness
You told me once my writing spoke of yearning.
I did?
Yes. And today, oh, how true that was…
The air filled thick with history as I entered the room, recumbent, quiet. I’d just had a sweet Thanksgiving feast with a strong marvel of a family, tight and sure, a group as open in their failings as their laughs and songs and stories of success…a group unlike my own beloved family, with tensions thick as oak trees and these knots wrought just to break. Yet too, I felt amazed at the raw strength I’d overlooked in my own mother. I cursed her my first year of college, let no space there for her own failings and weakness. I’d blamed her for my inability to love, then years later, realized she didn’t think I was broken. She just knew there was something better for me…even if that something took me far from her, and baffled her own mind.
Think of how strong mothers are, even the worst. They give up part of their identity, their strong selfish pursuits and every pleasure one enjoys without commitments to a helpless being. She dedicated her whole life to us, and though she struggled in that flawed pursuit, I took it always for granted and somehow made it a way to blame her for my pain. When Dad left, I blamed him for years, then came to terms with that loss and turned my wrath on her like a beast. Without words I feasted on the corpse Dad’s heart had let hers, casting her into the outer darkness with weeping and gnashing of teeth, and for what? For not brushing her hair more often, losing a few pounds. For being human, flawed, and then for being affected, in the midst of her immense selflessness, by the pain that came from being her child. Yet she gave us everything.
We all have human parents-oh, the joy of the obvious. But we expect them to be supernatural-to realize grave consequences at the first sign of trouble. Who hasn’t wished their mother avoided that first sip of alcohol, or that their father just looked away from the easy secretary?
These things are wrong, and to ever excuse them would be sin. But we have each ourselves done things we knew at that moment was wrought in sin. We have all chosen lesser paths, cursed God’s best, taken our own way. Let us rejoice when our parents choose right, then, later on, if they recognize their own darkness and repent. My mother, for her problems, knows too well the bottom of her weakness. I think I have too long lacerated her for pains already cut too deeply to heal. I can pray for her wholeness, but how will she ever accept God’s forgiveness if her own daughters continues to cast stones?
And for those parents who never turn back, who give in completely to darkness? Hate the cliché-“bitter or better”-but don’t live its consequence. Today my dad ate with his wife’s family, a friendly bunch from backwoods Georgia that he detests thanks to an increasing sense of superiority. But he chose that life, and I myself have found joy even in the family of my stepmom. Those who hurt may not appear to hurt inside, but they bear their own guilt. God’s well-aware; we have no need to add boulders to their own backs when it is we who bear such loads.
I love my mom. I love my dad. And on this Thanksgiving, I guess I am just grateful they’re still here.
I did?
Yes. And today, oh, how true that was…
The air filled thick with history as I entered the room, recumbent, quiet. I’d just had a sweet Thanksgiving feast with a strong marvel of a family, tight and sure, a group as open in their failings as their laughs and songs and stories of success…a group unlike my own beloved family, with tensions thick as oak trees and these knots wrought just to break. Yet too, I felt amazed at the raw strength I’d overlooked in my own mother. I cursed her my first year of college, let no space there for her own failings and weakness. I’d blamed her for my inability to love, then years later, realized she didn’t think I was broken. She just knew there was something better for me…even if that something took me far from her, and baffled her own mind.
Think of how strong mothers are, even the worst. They give up part of their identity, their strong selfish pursuits and every pleasure one enjoys without commitments to a helpless being. She dedicated her whole life to us, and though she struggled in that flawed pursuit, I took it always for granted and somehow made it a way to blame her for my pain. When Dad left, I blamed him for years, then came to terms with that loss and turned my wrath on her like a beast. Without words I feasted on the corpse Dad’s heart had let hers, casting her into the outer darkness with weeping and gnashing of teeth, and for what? For not brushing her hair more often, losing a few pounds. For being human, flawed, and then for being affected, in the midst of her immense selflessness, by the pain that came from being her child. Yet she gave us everything.
We all have human parents-oh, the joy of the obvious. But we expect them to be supernatural-to realize grave consequences at the first sign of trouble. Who hasn’t wished their mother avoided that first sip of alcohol, or that their father just looked away from the easy secretary?
These things are wrong, and to ever excuse them would be sin. But we have each ourselves done things we knew at that moment was wrought in sin. We have all chosen lesser paths, cursed God’s best, taken our own way. Let us rejoice when our parents choose right, then, later on, if they recognize their own darkness and repent. My mother, for her problems, knows too well the bottom of her weakness. I think I have too long lacerated her for pains already cut too deeply to heal. I can pray for her wholeness, but how will she ever accept God’s forgiveness if her own daughters continues to cast stones?
And for those parents who never turn back, who give in completely to darkness? Hate the cliché-“bitter or better”-but don’t live its consequence. Today my dad ate with his wife’s family, a friendly bunch from backwoods Georgia that he detests thanks to an increasing sense of superiority. But he chose that life, and I myself have found joy even in the family of my stepmom. Those who hurt may not appear to hurt inside, but they bear their own guilt. God’s well-aware; we have no need to add boulders to their own backs when it is we who bear such loads.
I love my mom. I love my dad. And on this Thanksgiving, I guess I am just grateful they’re still here.