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Journeys To Mother Love

~ Encouragement and healing in mother/child relationships

Journeys To Mother Love

Category Archives: letting go of anger

A Journey to Brother Love, Part 1

09 Sunday Nov 2014

Posted by ardisanelson in emotional needs, family gatherings, generational patterns, God's healing love, letting go of anger, reach out and touch, reconciliation, the healing journey

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a heart filled with love and hope, authentic relationship, Courage to be honest, Emotional and spiritual healing, Family, Finding our identity, Forgiveness, Healing love, relationships, unresolved hurt

1996 Reunion

With my father and brothers in 1996

Recently a new pathway of healing opened up to me: a “journey to brother love.”

My father married many times and had children from multiple wives—my siblings being the last. I grew up knowing about an older half-sister, but never met her. I didn’t know about a half-brother I had until 18 years ago when my father reunited with him after 52 years of separation.

I was in my early 30s, just starting my own family when my father called to tell me about my half-brother. It was an ‘Oprah’ type story of amazing coincidences that led to their reunion.

I felt like my world had been turned upside down.

My father invited me and another sibling to meet him. The half-brother lived across country and was making a trip to our area. I eagerly obliged, or maybe obeyed is a better word. This was in my pre-recovery days when I was still holding onto the past, carrying a lot of anger, and searching for my father’s love. Now I had to share that love with some long-lost family member.  My resentment must’ve leaked through in that one and only meeting.

My father remained in close contact with his new-found son over the years. They had several cross-country visits. I occasionally heard of their trips together. Each time I nursed my internal pangs: “But what about me?”

Since that time, I’ve spent many years of healing and recovery work to get to a place of forgiveness and love for my father. My dad even helped with some family history while I was working on the final draft of my story in Journeys to Mother Love. Unfortunately, he passed away a month before the book was released.

My half-brother couldn’t make it to our father’s memorial service. My stepmother (not his mother), ordered an autographed copy for me to send to my brother’s wife. I had experienced even more healing and forgiveness with my father wound with his passing. With that fresh perspective, I decided to send a letter to my brother, along with the book.

Here’s an excerpt from that letter: “I think each of his (my father’s) children carry a distinct Smith* mark in their DNA that we had to overcome as his children. And just because we had more physical time living with him, it doesn’t mean we didn’t carry familial scars. I say this to you in the hopes that you won’t let any of those feelings get in the way of continuing to stay connected with this family.”

Soon I received a nice note from his wife telling me how much she loved the book and that my story touched her as she grieved the recent loss of her mother. We continued our communications, but there was no direct response from my brother.

Then a few weeks ago I got a call from my stepmother that my half-brother and his wife were going to be in town. I was invited to come home for a visit. At first I declined due to an already full schedule. But thoughts of my brother and our disjointed family connection kept surfacing.

Did I need more healing or was it for my brother? I needed to know.

So I set aside my work and hopped on a train across the state.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this post to find out how this Journey to Brother Love ends.

~ Ardis A. Nelson

*Surname changed to protect family privacy.

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THE GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT

26 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by arcecil in challenges of motherhood, childhood memories, emotional needs, expectations, forgiving mom, forgiving yourself, generational patterns, God's healing love, Jesus on the cross, letting go of anger, rejecting lies, the healing journey

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authentic relationship, Forgiveness, Healing love, life stages, mother and daughter

flowers, mountain sillouette, and sunset

flowers, mountain silhouette, and sunset

The four of us sat in the dining room of the nursing home. Two of us had cars in the parking lot; we were free to leave any time. The other two occupied wheelchairs because their legs would not support the weight of their bodies and their minds would not support a plan as simple as how to exit the building.

I was one of the ones who would be leaving. Usually I am the only non-resident who is sitting at my mother’s table in the dining hall, but this day the daughter of another lady had come to visit. The two of us carried on a conversation between the bits and pieces of attention that we gave our mothers, those bits and pieces being all our mothers could receive.

Then, out of the blue, the other daughter made a statement. “This one,” she said, as she gestured with a sideways nod toward her mother. (“This one”! Had she just called her mother “this one”? I thought.) “Kept a perfect house,” the other daughter continued. “Beds had to be made every morning. Twice a year we had to clean everything from the ceilings to the floors.”

I looked at the woman’s mother. She is younger than my mother by 15-20 years, but oxygen tubes trailed from her nostrils. My mother, who is now 99 years old, was going strong 15-20 years ago. The lady with the oxygen tubes was oblivious to her daughter’s comment. My mind scanned its reservoir of information, searching for an appropriate response to the other daughter’s comment. (My knee-jerk reaction was, I wish my childhood home had been tidier; but I did not tell her that. My next thought was, I wonder if my children think I cared too much about the cleanliness and order? But, of course, I didn’t air that question either.) The moment passed for lack of feedback, and the conversation moved in another direction.

Soon the visit ended. It was time for my mother’s nap. I exited the building to my car in the parking lot. In the car on the way back to accomplish the rest of my list of errands, my thoughts were drawn back to the table in the dining hall. Is there anybody who wishes his or her childhood was different, and therefore, better?

It is impossible to make a perfect home, to be a perfect mother, or to be a perfect child. But that’s what our minds seem to be set on: Perfect. We really think we can accomplish perfect, or we can go through life “bent out of shape” because our childhood home was not the version of perfect we were longing to have. I know there are varying degrees of imperfection, and some people have huge hurdles to overcome.

However, we have a heavenly Father who covers us in grace. After Adam and Eve sinned, God covered them with the skins of animals. Those animals were the first creatures to know death. That act of love was a foreshadowing of the supreme act of covering with grace by the death of God’s Son, Jesus, on a cross.

God’s grace is the only way we can break the cycle of hurt—anger—hurt—anger—hurt. We might not be able to control very much in our lives, or accomplish a long list of achievements. But, we can accomplish—I believe—the greatest achievement. We can be the generation in our family that chooses to break those negative cycles for our family. We do this by forgiving and “covering each other with grace.”

~A.R. (Alice) Cecil

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A Journey to Stepmother Love

09 Friday May 2014

Posted by ardisanelson in childhood memories, emotional needs, letting go of anger, stepmom relationship, the healing journey

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Tags

a heart filled with love and hope, Emotional and spiritual healing, Forgiveness, giving and receiving, Healing love, mother and daughter, unresolved hurt

Step-mother-love-01I was nine years old when my parents divorced. I’ll never forget that day. After hearing the news, I ran into the woods behind our house and cried my eyes out. “Why? Why? Why?” I cried to God.

Those repressed memories surfaced a while back in a therapy session as I got in touch with the little Ardis who was hurting from the trauma of this event. I’ve processed this before, but this time I remembered something new. I remembered that I told my father I hated him. It became one of those pivotal moments in my life when I decided I had to be a BIG girl and stuff my emotions.

I surfaced from those woods, calm and collected. I WAS a big girl. But try as I might, that anger at what was going on between my parents was still there. Both of my parents soon remarried. I lived with my mother and stepfather thousands of miles away from my father, who had retained our family home as part of the divorce settlement. The only time I got to see him was on summer vacation periods. His remarriage was so short-lived that I never met his new wife and never even considered her a stepmother.

When I was 13 years old, another woman came into my father’s life, and he remarried again. Inside I’m sure I was devastated, although I never talked to my father about it. I was desperately searching and longing for his love and approval. After they wed, my summer visits were spent at her home. My days were long, lounging around the house watching soap operas, and taking care of her dog—not much fun for a teenage girl. Yet I continued to worship the ground my father walked on.

My stepmother treated me fairly. I don’t remember being mean or unruly with her. I never called her ‘mom’, only by her first name.  But to hear her tell of this time in my life, I get a very different story. It’s a story about an angry, lazy teen that didn’t do much of anything, and made her wishes and demands known to all within earshot.

The healing of that turbulent angry young teen took many years of deep spiritual growth and recovery work. And when my father passed away two years ago at the age of 94, I had already forgiven him and learned to accept that he could not give me the kind of love I had longed for.

But it was the love of his wife, my stepmother, which really helped to fill that hole in my heart.

Over recent years, we have spent countless hours on the phone, talking about adult women issues, and sharing our hearts. She has been a big supporter of my writing and always wants to hear about what is going on in my life.

Interestingly enough, what brought us together was the empathy and compassion we both received from an understanding of what it was like to live with my father. They were married 38 years.

As I got healing for my father wounds, I was able to come alongside her more as well. She endured long suffering as she cared for my father the last several years of his life. She sacrificed. She toiled. And when he passed, she asked me to write his eulogy, and gave me and my siblings carte blanche on how to run his memorial service. It was a huge gift to me.

My stepmother celebrated her 80th birthday recently, with a huge party of friends and family. While I barely knew any of them, my family and I traveled the 150 miles to celebrate with her. She’s been a pillar of strength for me to lean on these past several years. I owe her that much in return. After all, while I didn’t recognize it much over the years, she has been to some degree the mother I never had.

We had a rocky start, but this journey to stepmother love has been worth the wait. Happy Mother’s Day, MOM!

~ Ardis A. Nelson

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What? You Can’t Stop Crying

08 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by arcecil in challenges of motherhood, confessing our need, emotional needs, encouraging each other, God's healing love, grief and loss, letting go of anger, reach out and touch, the healing journey, when tragedy hits

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

a heart filled with love and hope, Emotional and spiritual healing, life stages, life's upward path, Mothering, Women's Issues

Alice-poetry-bookWHAT? YOU CAN’T STOP CRYING

What? You can’t stop crying.
I hear you. Been there.
You say you left your grocery cart in frozen foods.
You’re telling me it was loaded with food
and every kind of whatnot
from all the other aisles,
And then you hightailed it to your car.
There you hid behind sunglasses and drove home.
Did you remember to wipe your fingerprints
off the handle of the loaded, abandoned cart
in frozen foods?
Just kidding.

You complain you couldn’t sleep because your slumber
was interrupted by the need to blow your nose.
David of the Old Testament cried on his bed.
See, we are in good company.

Let’s look at the list of life’s events that can trigger
such an avalanche of emotion.
Just check the one that fits, or mark “Other”
at the bottom.

All right, here we go.
You poured your life into the children.
All the children left home.
The empty nest doesn’t feel as good as you thought it would.

You lost your job.
You’re too old to be hired.
You’re not sure whether this reinventing is right for you.

You moved your mother into a nursing home.
You tried to manage Mom at home.
You moved your mother back into the home.

There is an injustice in your life.
You try to think of ways to address it.
Every idea leads to a dead end.
You choose to remain silent.

You have just received a bad diagnosis.
Many well-intentioned people are offering suggestions.

Someone who is dear to you is very ill.
That loved one says, “Just sit with me.”

An important person in your life passes away.

Other.

Listen, if you weren’t crying, I’d be worried about you.
I sympathize with you.
God empathizes with you.
That’s the reason He included people
like Joseph, David, Job, and Paul in His Book.
Think about them; think about the Lord; and think about me.
And, in the near future,
you’ll be able to leave your empty cart in the corral,
go home, store the perishables in the refrigerator,
and then sit on the sofa and have a good cry.
Now, that will be progress. That will be hope.

~ A.R. (Alice) Cecil

Editor’s note: This poem is taken from the book, IN THAT PLACE CALLED DAY: Poems and Reflections That Witness God’s Love.

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Run, Run as Fast as You Can

21 Thursday Nov 2013

Posted by arcecil in childhood memories, confessing our need, emotional needs, encouraging each other, generational patterns, God's healing love, Influence of Grandparents, letting go of anger, the healing journey

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

authentic relationship, Christian spirituality, Courage to be honest, Emotional and spiritual healing, Finding our identity, God the Father, Grandparent, Modeling the faith, Parenting

File:Gingerbread landscape.jpg

photo:Orsotron (Wikipedia)

Sunny days must have consistently won over rainy ones when I was a school-aged child because most of my memories are rooted in the long treks after the three o’clock dismissal. I would hightail it home, taking every shortcut through the backyards that stood between the elementary school and my front door.

“Run, run as fast as you can,” I would tell my feet, as I was distancing myself from those immature children who picked favorites and then picked on those they had deemed inferior.

There was no doubt whether or not I was on the list of the popular kids, but I never was ridiculed because I made myself invisible, an ability I learned from the dynamics in my home. This skill was utilized in almost every social circle. Go to school, do a little work; come home and see how my mother was doing; that routine suited me very well until it dawned on me that I could not remain invisible forever and survive.

One day when school was dismissed, the bright blue sky suddenly turned black and then proceeded to release every drop of its accumulated precipitation. “Run, run as fast as you can,” I told my feet. “Run to get out of the rain.”

At home I found my mother dozing on the day bed in the den while the soap operas told the sordid intermingling of the lives of beautiful people. I stopped in the bathroom and rubbed my wet hair with a towel. A glance in the mirror did not reveal a beautiful person, and I couldn’t blame the rain. Here at the onset of my teen years, I was faced with a great dilemma: I desperately wanted to fit in, but I was afraid.

Dropping my wet clothes on the floor, I pulled on a casual outfit which included my favorite sweatshirt. In it, I felt secure. Then I slid onto the couch that sat adjacent to my mother’s bed.

As I was my mother’s companion for TV’s “Guiding Light,” I imagined myself to be my father’s silent confidant, ever ready to pour out words of encouragement and comfort whenever he would choose to turn and acknowledge me. Something sad was brewing in his heart, and I wanted to help him. But he never chose to confide in me. Where was he, so deep in thought? Was he replaying the time he spent in World War II and the unbelievable atrocities he saw there?

I felt powerless to solve my parents’ problems. So I determined someday to lift them up on the shoulders of my happiness. Such was the grand, warped plan of my childhood.

As I waited for that bright future, I found some semblance of relationship with my maternal grandmother. I was drawn to her orderly home and gentle, disciplined spirit. And she was religious. While the entire extended family went to church every Sunday, she was the only one who put voice to her faith; she was the one who lived out the gospel with steadfast endurance. Grandmother had no time for moping. She hit the linoleum running in the morning. She had her share of difficulties, but she never let them define her.

Time slowly passed and, with great delight, I left the teen years behind. At twenty I was preparing to leave for the city to fulfill my destiny. But first I visited Grandmother. I nervously chatted away, keeping the conversation light and funny. All that talking, however, took an unexpected, woeful turn. Out tumbled many fears with a hint of the underlying anger. Then, since I didn’t like what I was hearing myself say, I iced it over by backtracking with remarks that served only as a layer of guilt.

There is no hope for me, I groaned within my spirit. Grandmother, however, intently listened without interrupting, like a psychologist who is assessing her client’s situation. When I finished, silence filled the space between us and I wanted to flee. But then Grandmother spoke and her words revealed the strength behind her small frame.

“We must take up our cross,” she simply said.

Our cross? What does the cross have to do with my plans for a life where everything is tidy, happy, and successful? What was Grandmother talking about?

While I could not make the connection of Christ’s cross to my life, Grandmother’s statement sank deep within my soul where it lay dormant for many years.

Grandmother lived to see me marry a fine man and have one daughter. My plans for a good life were set in motion. I kept our home immaculate. During the holidays, it looked like a Christmas card. Every spring and summer the flower beds declared: “Care and love reside within.” Boundless energy undergirded the dream. As long as I worked hard and pretended to be happy, surely my heart would catch up with my outward persona. However, deep down inside there was a faint echo: “Not right! Not right! Something’s missing.”

Then the second daughter was born. After one month of caring for the baby that would not settle, she was diagnosed with cancer. Fourteen months passed, and the surgery and radiation treatments did not fulfill their intended purpose; the cancer was back and now in her bone marrow. Chemotherapy was the new, last hope.

“Run, run as fast as you can,” I read to the older sister. “You can’t catch me. I’m the gingerbread man.”

Run, run to be there for the five-year-old sibling. Run, run to take care of the house, to look after the baby, to keep all of her appointments. … Run, run, I was running out of steam.

There were many rounds of chemotherapy. She received a treatment every day for one week, every third week, for two years. After one of the toddler’s chemotherapy treatments, I was sitting beside her on my big bed that had been prepared for her body’s violent reaction to the toxins. Several hours of vomiting and diarrhea would soon begin. While she slept, I read a book about an encounter a man had with Jesus when he was in prayer. (The book came into my life because I was searching for something/anything to help me cope.) I put the book down and let the pent-up tears flow. I was so sad. More than sad, I was angry. In my mind in that moment, the sleeping child beside me was not going to have the chance for a full life.

“I’ve done everything I know to do,” I told the ceiling. “It’s up to you now!”

Of course, I was not calling out to the ceiling, but to our heavenly Father. The prayer was a two-pronged one: one prong for the recovery of my sick child and one for me. I was tired, and I was lost. I was confused, and my best efforts had failed. I was so tired. “Run, run,” I was tired of running. I could no longer outrun God.

At that very moment of the prayer, Someone else started running. “Run, run,” God the Father was running as fast as he could, for he saw one of his children turn and start coming toward him (see Luke 15:20, the account of the Prodigal Son).

Jesus entered my life that day thirty-one years ago. The experience of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is as real to me as the physical objects around me. The sick child survived and is now a grown, healthy, married woman. I no longer run aimlessly. God is the mainspring of my life. I now understand Grandmother’s response to the fact that the cross is the answer for my life. In order to bring glory to God, I have had to take up my cross daily and follow him. But with him, my burden is light because I am held up by his everlasting arms.

Did my life turn out to be perfect? Since that day on my daughter’s sick bed, have I lived “happily-ever-after”? I can only be honest and say, “No, of course not.” Am I perfect person? No, of course, not. But, there is a huge difference between the woman who was running to make a good life and the woman who now looks to God for the answers in her life.

~A.R. Cecil

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Role-Reversal and Emotional Baggage

21 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by Catherine Lawton in confessing our need, emotional needs, feeling inadequate, forgiving mom, frustration to freedom, God's healing love, letting go of anger, mother wounds, the healing journey

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authentic relationship, Courage to be honest, Emotional and spiritual healing, Forgiveness, life stages, mother and daughter, relationships, Role reversal, unresolved hurt

Loritta Slayton

Loritta, author of the story “White Knuckles”

Loritta Slayton tells another story of mother-daughter role reversal.

“Little by little,” Loritta says, “more of those decisions that limited Mom’s independence were required…. Quite independent her entire life, this change was hard for her. I found it challenging to lead in the face of her resistance and frustration. I hated the friction it caused.”

Loritta’s upbringing wasn’t characterized by warm or demonstrative affection and trust. White-knuckled anger took hold of Loritta as the responsibility for her aging mother (and then her mother-in-law as well!) fell to her. Loritta says, “Mom had ways of bringing out my lack of patience…. I had emotional baggage to deal with and I didn’t know how.”

Loritta’s story, “White Knuckles,” is the last story in the book, Journeys to Mother Love, for a reason. She has a strong testimony of relational healing that hinged on forgiveness toward her mother and obedience to the Lord. The conclusion to her story makes a fitting conclusion to the entire book:

“And so I hope that you, the reader, will be encouraged to give God permission to loosen your fingers from any ‘white-knuckled’ grip. May you be encouraged to say, ‘yes.’ May you experience the joy of finding freedom in any relationship where you’ve let your emotions rule over your heart and life. … Don’t wait. Give God permission now and start your journey to freedom and love.”

Thank you, Loritta, for your example to us of honesty and courage and faith.

~Catherine Lawton

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It’s Not too Late to Forgive

21 Thursday Mar 2013

Posted by ardisanelson in confessing our need, leaving a legacy, letting go of anger, reconciliation, the healing journey

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Courage to be honest, Emotional and spiritual healing, Forgiveness, Healing love

Ardis and her dad

Ardis with her dad soon before his death

Like a scab ripped from the skin, my wound was exposed again. Why would I deliberately enter into that wound again? How could I think that it was really healed? A recent post, “I Forgive You,” by Catherine Lawton was the catalyst that prompted me to take another look. That, and the fact that I spent Holy Week last year caring for my 93-year-old father, sent my mind back to the months preceding his death.

Catherine’s post reminded me of how the words and actions of forgiveness were not something that was modeled to me when I was growing up. Tears weren’t allowed either. We were taught to ‘buck it up’ and move on. Reading that post took me back to the letter I had written my father a year before he died. My grief at that time was still fresh from my mother’s passing, and my healing was making me bold in things of the heart. After reading Catherine’s post I pulled out that year-old letter.

Re-reading the letter to my father brought the pain of the wound to the surface. Tears overcame me as I read the words I had penned to him about my inner healing. I knew he had worried about me in the past, concerned that I would develop mental illness like my mother. He had told me that he was ‘watching me’ for signs. So I wrote the letter to reassure him that I was okay.

I’ll share a part of the letter to hopefully inspire others to forgive their parents. I sent this letter with no expectations from him in return. I just wrote what I felt the Lord laid on my heart to tell him:

“I won’t know all God’s purposes until I am in Heaven, too. But here on this earth and in this time, I have received incredible healing and much peace…. That is what I want for you, Dad. I thought it was important for you to know that Mom forgave you [before she died]. I want you to know that I forgive you also. I know you did the best you could under the circumstances. Even if you do have regrets about any of these family things, I know that, as a Smith,* it would be incredibly difficult for you to admit it. We Smiths always think we are so right. I guess if I had one regret in my upbringing it would be that I didn’t learn how to forgive others and to say “I’m sorry.” Those words would’ve helped me let go of so much of my anger and resentments years ago…

“…It’s not too late for you, Dad. You can do this. You can release all your ‘rightness’ and no-regrets thinking to the Lord. You can leave this family with a legacy of forgiveness. I hope and pray the Lord will bless you and keep you in His love for all your remaining days.

“I love you.

“Ardis”

My father never mentioned this letter to me or anything that was in it, but my stepmother told me he read and re-read it many times. I believe it sank into his heart, bridged the distance between us, and eventually gave him the ability to go in peace. Risking his rejection and ridicule by expressing my heart was worth it.

How about you? Is there someone to whom you need to say “I forgive you” while there is still time?

~ Ardis A. Nelson

*Surname changed to protect family privacy.

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“I Forgive You”

07 Thursday Mar 2013

Posted by Catherine Lawton in childhood memories, confessing our need, forgiving mom, God's healing love, letting go of anger, the healing journey

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

authentic relationship, Courage to be honest, Forgiveness, Jesus, Lent, relationships, unresolved hurt

"Forgiveness 3" by Carlos Latuff.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In every close relationship we can get our feelings hurt. At those times—when we hurt each other in big and small ways—two little words make a huge difference: “I’m sorry.” Have you said “I’m sorry” recently to your best friend? to your spouse? to your child? to your parent?

Then a sweet, healing balm is applied to the wound when three simple but powerful words are spoken back: “I forgive you.”

Nine Women Tell their Stories of Forgiveness & Healing … That’s the subtitle of our book, and for good reason. Healing and forgiveness go together. In fact, I can confidently say that relational healing won’t happen without forgiveness.

Forgiveness is the turning point in all the stories in Journeys to Mother Love.

During this season of Lent, I am going to meditate on the forgiveness provided for me by Jesus on the cross. He forgave freely, unconditionally, forever. Jesus was mocked, misunderstood, abused, rejected. Yet he said, “Father, forgive them.”

He was despised and rejected … a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering…. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows … and by his wounds we are healed (Isaiah 53: 3-6)

 
Stained glass at St John the Baptist's Anglica...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Can we not bring our offenses, hurts, and rejections to Jesus?

Because Jesus forgives, we must. Because he did, we can.

Forgive. Then live in a heart attitude of forgiveness. Slights, rejections, offenses will come—sometimes unexpectedly, catching us off-guard. I’m asking the Lord to help me recognize those feelings when they come, then help me give the offense and the feelings to Jesus immediately. He knows my thoughts and feelings already. I can simply let it go. In faith. With love. Because there are much bigger things at stake than my hurt feelings. Because it’s so much more important how the Lord sees me than how others see me. Because he gave his life and shed his precious blood so that forgiveness could happen. Because fellowship, relationship, wholeness are so important to the Lord and so wonderful to experience.

I realize some wounds are so deep we hardly know how to face them, how to deal with them, or even exactly what or who we need to forgive. Perhaps the other person is not saying “I’m sorry.” But our unforgiving spirit is causing us pain and keeping us from a life of joyful wholeness.

As a child I heard my preacher father give the sermon illustration of a festering boil, full of pus and painful to touch. Such a sore place causes misery and anguish until you are willing to have it lanced open and drained of the poisonous, pressuring pus. Or what about a person who had a broken arm that wasn’t set properly and grew together wrong, awkward and painful? It must be re-broken and set properly so it can knit together in harmony and heal, so the arm will move freely without pain.

I don’t want to let poisonous reactions, angry pressure, out-of-kilter attitudes, or pus-like resentment fester in my soul and cause anguish in my relationships.

Lord, give me the grace to say and mean, “I forgive you.”

~Catherine Lawton

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  • arcecil
    • The Imperfect Job of Mothering
    • Storing Away Christmas ~ THE GOD BOX
    • Who Am I?
    • THE GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT
    • STAIRCASE TO A BETTER PLACE AND TIME
    • What? You Can’t Stop Crying
  • ardisanelson
    • A Mother’s Day Gift to my Sons
    • Sharing our Stories in Community
    • A Grateful Lesson in Letting go of our Children
    • The Blessing of ‘Imperfect’ Children
    • “You’re Just Like Your Mother”
    • A Journey to Brother Love, Part 2
  • Catherine Lawton
    • We Come Trembling
    • New Beginnings
    • Living Wounds
    • Loneliness
    • What? You Can’t Stop Crying
    • Faith in the Birthing Room
  • finishingwell2
    • Mom’s Cooking
    • Always a Mother
    • Postscript to “Finishing Well”
    • Perfect Parenting
  • good2bfree
    • A Mother’s Legacy
    • Grace to Broken Mamas on Mother’s Day
  • guestmom
    • Forgiving Yourself — and Your Children
    • If Your Child is a Prodigal
    • Helicopter Mom, You’re Creating a Draft
  • Kerry Luksic
    • The Gift of Faith
  • kyleen228
    • Dreading Mother’s Day
    • “Mom-ness”
    • The Power of Sharing Your Deepest Secrets 
    • Adopted Siblings ~ A Special Closeness
    • Walking In Faith Through Adoption
    • Honesty about Our Struggles is the Best Way to Help Each Other
  • lorittaslayton
  • Christina
    • Grandma’s Apron
    • Much Ado about Nothing but Love
    • Mother Love
  • vernahsimms
    • A Letter to Mom
    • A Gift of Flowers
    • A Game of Love
    • Our Common Interests

Abortion Adoption a heart filled with love and hope Alzheimer's disease Aunt authentic relationship celebrate Child Child Jesus Children Christian novel Christian spirituality Christmas Christmastime Courage to be honest Death Dream Emotional and spiritual captivity Emotional and spiritual healing experiencing Christ Family Family traditions fathers day Finding our identity Forgiveness Forgiving yourself friendship future hope giving and receiving God's promises God the Father Grandparent Gratitude Grief Loss and Bereavement Healing love healing of memories Holidays Holy Week Home hope Jesus kids leaving home letting go life's upward path life and death life stages Mary milestones Ministry Modeling the faith Mom Factor Mother Mother's Day mother and daughter Mothering mother love motherly instincts no false guilt or shame Parenting Parenting styles Peace and joy personal discoveries Post-Abortion Healing Prayer Praying for our children relationships Sadness Sandwich generation Sewing smother love spirituality Thanksgiving unresolved hurt White Christmas Women's Issues

Adopted children challenges of motherhood childhood memories confessing our need emotional needs encouraging each other expectations family gatherings feeling inadequate forgiving mom forgiving yourself frustration to freedom generational patterns generations coming together God's healing love God as our parent Gratitude grief and loss healing after abortion importance of prayer Learning to appreciate Mom leaving a legacy letting go of anger losing mom too soon Motherhood mother wounds Parenting reach out and touch the healing journey when tragedy hits

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