Don’t Kid Yourself — Parents Die

 

(A repost from 2013.)

Thanks to my astoundingly generous sister, I have had an iPhone for one year now. She bought it for me mostly because it was the same cost as renting a GPS for me for one of my events that required me to drive—and she knows that I am the MOST spatially-confused human on the planet. I get lost in my own neighborhood, more or less navigating in a new, large city. Sixteen lanes of 75 mph traffic doesn’t bother me—I am a confident and competent driver—but trying to be “in my map” and figure out whether I’m supposed to turn left or right? Well. It’s like a bad dream in my head. I try and I try but I just can’t figure it out. And Kali has been my own personal GPS when I have called her in a panic on many, MANY occasions:

“OK. What state are you in? Do you know what city you are in? Can you see what street or highway you are on? Got it. All we need now are two cross streets so I can figure out which direction you are heading. OK. Now. Where are you trying to go?”

(I’m not kidding about this.)

Anyhoo …

The Google Map feature of an iPhone to me is amazing and it has navigated me to safety on countless occasions already—so that is one aspect of a smartphone that I have sort of figured out. (I still can’t figure out the whole “pinning” thing, but oh well.) But it’s only been a few weeks since I started even trying to figure out the whole email on a phone thing (and I’m only able to do that because Fred is helping me). And last night? In some sort of setting up POP/IMAP mystery, my laptop had to receive a backlog of old emails (just one time) to get everything set up. No problem. I just went to delete them all. But then I saw old emails from my mom. And my heart screeched to a deleting halt.

These were not important emails. They were one line responses to me sending her photos from our normal, simple, boring little life:

August 6, 2012
Me: Swim lessons are about to start!
My mom: Adorable! What sisterly love. Mom

 

 

 

I couldn’t delete it.

It was like she was right there again! Probably playing her Facebook games while watching FOX news and listening to talk radio. Drinking coffee all day. Puffing away on her cigarette. Helping someone in AA (or being helped by someone in AA). Brushing her cat. Laughing at something funny my stepfather just did. Talking on the phone with her best friend, Anne.

And emailing me little one-line notes because she loved my children and she loved me.

I miss my mom. I do. I’m crying now and that’s just the way it is. But I’m also SO grateful now because my mother and I were reconciled years and years before she died. We pushed through the pain of the start of our relationship to forgive one another and move towards one another as adults and as friends and as fallen creatures living in a fallen world. Thus, when she was dying, I was not scrambling to say all sorts of things before she was gone. I was not tied in knots over whether I had shared the gospel with her “enough” or shown her love “enough.”

By God’s grace, by His Spirit, with the help of His Word and His Church, I knew I had already spent years loving my mother. So when she declined so horribly quickly and when she died, I was sad. I still am sad. But I am also grateful.

How about you?

Are you taking it for granted that “some day” you will forgive your mother? Your father? Your child? An ex-spouse? A daughter-in-law?

Are you living under the delusion that you have all sorts of time to work hard and make things right with a friend? A brother in Christ? The church leader who offended you? The sheep who bit you?

I can tell by the email chain with my mother that the above message was sent only DAYS before we found out her heart was functioning at 25%. I know this because there were only two or three more normal emails and then it was all coordinating itineraries and hotels for my sister and I to fly repeatedly to Michigan to help with end-of-life decisions and mostly, just to spend time with her before she was gone. (My mother’s heart functioning dropped to less than 10% in only three months and then her brain just couldn’t get enough oxygen for normal communication and within weeks she was gone.)

None of us knows the length of our days or the days of people who have hurt us. We are foolish to try to kid ourselves and say that we can be reconciled “tomorrow.”

“Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” James 4:13-15 ESV

We have no idea when the call will come that our parent is gone. We have no idea when we will die. But we do know this: The Lord does will it that we are to forgive our debtors and love our enemies. Even when—especially when!—that enemy is someone in our family:

“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” Colossians 3:12-17 ESV

You will never regret loving. You will never regret forgiving. But I know many people who live with the burden of deep regret for not loving and not forgiving before it was too late.

This life is short! Eternity is long. May God help us to be so filled with amazement over God’s forgiveness of us that we are eager to forgive others:

“Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.

“Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt.

But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place.

Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” Matthew 18:21-35 ESV

I know it’s hard. Our flesh rebels at the thought of forgiving the people who have hurt us the most.

So don’t concentrate on THEM and don’t even concentrate on YOURSELF. Fix your eyes on JESUS, the Author and Perfector of your faith. Don’t mull over what your parent did or did not do to you. Don’t replay it in your mind and feed your bitterness and self-righteous, judgmental heart. Meditate on what your Heavenly Father did in order to reconcile YOU to HIM. Compare your filthy rags to His glory. Live your life replaying over and over again in your mind what it cost GOD to save YOU because of all you have done and you have failed to do. And then fall at His feet in worship!

This is how we forgive our parents. This is how we forgive anyone and everyone who has ever betrayed, abandoned, attacked, belittled, slandered, maligned, or hated us. (Or even worse! Just didn’t even notice we were there and thus, lived in indifference toward us—the “real indicator of true hatred” to use Ed Welch’s line.)

Owed such a great debt. And yet forgiven. Should we not also forgive?

For God’s glory, our good, and the proclamation of the gospel to a watching world—

Your sister in Christ,
Tara B.