Past...and Present

I listened to the speaker as she briefly related the highlights of her life. Her actions carried to my ears and eyes a slightly different message than what she was saying with her mouth. "My mother was a single mom, and life was hard for her..."

What I felt she was saying was: "I know it was hard for her...my brain accepts that...it was hard for me, and in my heart I still hurt."

Anger, resolved or unresolved, sometimes it is hard to let go. We often seek to understand things, wrestling with emotional demons that continually throw us to the ground. These feelings can make us feel unworthy, unloved, and often as not unloving.

Colossians 3:12 Put on therefore, as God's elect, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, longsuffering; 13) forbearing one another, and forgiving each other, if any man have a complaint against any; even as the Lord forgave you, so also do ye:

It is at times hard to forgive the slights that happen on a day to day basis, but time often dulls the antagonistic feeling from people's unkind or thoughtless words or actions.

The baggage we carry from childhood appears to be that which wounds the deepest.

"That woman doesn't deserve your love or compassion!" My cousin has just found out that my mother is dying of cancer.

As a Christian we are commanded to forgive...from the heart.

Have you ever seen children playing and the one play fellow does something...takes the others turn or toy, or perhaps pushes or shoves--most of us have witnessed the scene. Then the offender is brought to justice: "Say you're sorry...right now!"

Little tyke mumbles into his/her shirt something that sounds much like the words, "I'm sorry". But are they? And if they are what are they sorry for? If they are sorry for anything it is usually that they have been caught.

"She really wasn't a very good mother, was she?" Another cousin states.

"No, she wasn't," I answer with a sigh. But my mind goes back. I'm not thirty any more...matter-of-fact in a year and a half I'll be the same age she was when she passed away. I think back to the time when I was twenty, twenty-five, thirty--could I have navigated those years any better--or even as well--without God?

I remember the difficulties we went through raising our children. It was not easy--not even for two--let alone a single person. I am not excusing nor accusing. She made her decisions, and good or bad we all partook of the fruit of those decisions.

Ephesians 4:32 and be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, even as God also in Christ forgave you.

Emotions are tough things to get around. I am still ashamed at my attitude as a young person. My mother married and divorced four times--twice to the last man--wending her way through life--as many would say today--doing things HER way. I remember my mother at one point when life looked pretty bleak, crying, "I just want to be loved."

I was not old enough to love beyond the hurt, and I was honest enough I could not reach out and say to her, "I love you," or even express in a hopeful mode, "I will love you, someday".

No, she wasn't a very good mother, but how many of us would stand up to our own scrutiny? She wasn't a bad person, just a lost and lonely person. Not being able to change the past, there is no reason to dwell on, or agonize over it.

Human nature being what it is, why do most people--instead of learning and changing from painful childhoods--follow in those same paths?

"Oh, that person had a traumatic childhood. That is why they..."

Excuse me? Exactly--that is an excuse, but not a reason. When people follow in those paths it is because they CHOOSE to follow in them. The paths of least resistance, you see.

Lamentations 3:22 It is of Jehovah's lovingkindnesses that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. 23) They are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness. 24) Jehovah is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him.

1Corinthians 15:10 But by the grace of God I am what I am:....

Hallelujah! What a Saviour!