I spoke with my dad on a Friday a few weeks ago and he was fine. Over that weekend I got two emails from him that sounded strange and I called him Sunday night to check on him. He wasn’t feeling well. At four the next morning he was taken to the hospital by ambulance. I soon learned he had pneumonia and was COVID positive. He’s eighty-five and has underlying health issues. In only a short time, life changed. I’m thankful for peace, love, forgiveness and mended broken hearts.
Daddy and I have had a complex relationship my whole life. It hasn’t always been easy. One day in 2007 I came home from the store to find Kent and the kids sitting quietly on our back porch. In an odd tone, Kent said, “You’d better call your dad.” My heart stopped. “He’s left your mom.” Wow. Didn’t see that coming. Peace, love, and forgiveness are the last thing on your mind when your heart is breaking.
Barely a month before, we’d celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. They hadn’t wanted anything elaborate and Dad insisted on no gifts, so we reserved the church fellowship hall, invited local friends, and sent announcements to our extended family and everyone on Mom’s and Dad’s Christmas card list.
We provided stationary and asked guests to write letters to include in an album. Then, along with my brother and his family, we made brownies, party mix, and chocolate covered strawberries, decorated the hall with balloons and plastic tablecloths, and had a low key afternoon catching up with family and friends. Fun. Kent got some great pictures.
Turned out, Dad had planned to leave all along and when we asked him why he’d gone through the motions of having a party, he said, “I did it for your mom.” She was blindsided and heartbroken along with the rest of us when he left. Peace, love, forgiveness, really?
The years that followed were difficult and emotional and we all have scars. Their divorce shook the very foundation of our family. Its repercussions came in ever-widening circles, never stopping. Realizing that someone we trusted actually planned and carried out something that huge and dropped it onto our entire family without warning rattled us at our core. Every family celebration from that day on, every milestone with the kids, was an intricate dance orchestrated to keep peace and hopefully allow the one being celebrated to have a great time and special memories of their special day. Not easy. Not fun. Not fair.
A long time ago, I took a course entitled, “Making Peace With Your Past,” by Tim Sledge and I read Charles Stanley’s book “The Gift of Forgiveness.” Both were instrumental in helping me deal with the hurt and in helping me let go of a need to hurt back, to find freedom from the prison of unforgiveness. When my mom came to live with us during her battle with cancer in 2015, she found “The Gift of Forgiveness” on our bookshelf and it helped her find some peace too.
Navigating these past thirteen years has been a journey. As a wife, a mom, a daughter, and a sister, I have seen that whatever affects me affects everyone in our family. I have had to learn to let go, to heal, and to grow as a person, not just for myself, but for those I love. I have had to have hard conversations with both my parents where I have spoken “the truth in love,” and have listened while trying to be “slow to anger.” I have come to realize that unforgiveness colors every aspect of every relationship in my life and every aspect of who I am as a person–not just the part affected by the wrong done to me.
In my search for healing and my journey toward forgiveness, I found common struggles and common ground with others.
1. An article by John MacArthur described a peace keeper as someone who ignores issues so as not to rock the boat and a peace maker as someone who willingly opens the issues and works toward healing. Peace making is the healthier option and love and forgiveness are crucial.
2. The lyrics of the song “Forgiveness” by Matthew West speak to my heart when he says it’s– “undeserved,” “impossible,” and yet always “anger’s worst enemy.”
3. A quote by Former President Richard Nixon calls hate toward another person a poison that eats away the hater from the inside.
I want to be a peace maker. I want to be free to enjoy life without constant anger and bitterness, and in order to have peace, I have to have love and forgiveness. I have to have hard conversations without lashing out or shutting down. I’ve had to do that with my dad. It’s been a long and painful process, but over the last year or so, we’ve been building a better relationship and it’s been worth it.
I’m so glad we’ve had that time because during his illness, he disappeared into the recesses of the COVID floor, too weak to hold the phone for himself and unable to talk when a nurse held it for him, with the brain fog of COVID coming and going. I’ve had to content myself with sending messages to him through his caregivers, asking them to tell him that I love him and to keep fighting this thing. Now that he’s in rehab, it’s more of the same.
Life is unpredictable. We get such a brief time with those we love. I want to keep short accounts, keep current on dealing with issues, and not let stuff build up and create distance. I’m human and I make mistakes. I need forgiveness and I need second chances. I want to extend that same grace to the others in my life because our time’s too short to hang onto grudges. I don’t want to miss out on a single instant of joy. I want to be out in the sunshine breathing the fresh air.
Be safe. Be well. Be blessed.
