This Mother's Day, forgive your child

I love watching my son being a father. He’s really, really good at it. He and his wife are dedicated to their children, intentionally pouring life and love into them. Let’s not kid ourself, the baby and toddler years can be hard. There’s the constant physical labor, the lack of sleep, the endless demands from little voices and not to speak of the drain on the bank account. I commiserate with all mothers of young children. May you be rewarded, this Mother’s Day, with cuddles and kisses and mostly with some rest.For those of us who have been at this parenting thing much longer, we know that the gut-wrenching years come when we parent older children. This Mother’s Day I want to write to these moms.In a child’s growing up years, a mom’s heart becomes tender bait to hurts. The tongue of an older child has all the finesse of a jackhammer. The solid ground of childhood gets torn up seemingly overnight and boulders and ditches are scattered everywhere to negotiate. Mother and child sometimes stumble and fall through the almost-adult years.I don’t know a single woman who does not set out to be the best mom in the world. Not for the adoration but to get it right for the sake of her child who she loves more than her own breath. Certainly every mother I know determines to avoid the mistakes of her own mother. Each generation sets higher standards.Still, mothers beat themselves up for not being able to master the art of responding gently and speaking softly above the shattering noise of her child’s power tools. We all know those tools - the tantrums more deadly than any two-year-old’s kicking and screaming, the cold shoulder more frigid than absolute zero, the you-are-so-old-what-do-you-know disdain more demeaning than the suspicion that they are correct. After all, what do you know? These raw power tools leave, at minimum, bruises and scrapes and, at worse, gaping, bleeding holes. You wish for more time. Time to fix it all. Time to find the solid ground of childhood again. You want the innocent years back. You want to get rid of your own baggage, your own childhood hurts, your own insecurities. You want a do-over. You pray deeply that your child will remember the night-time songs you sang when they were afraid, the hours you drove them to swimming, the gentle back tickles, the happy times teaching them to bake muffins. You hope the messy almost-adult experiences between you and your child will not stick.To all moms of older children. Here’s a list of “wrongs” your grown child may have committed against you along with my heartfelt recommendation.

•  For making choices that you would not have made - forgive.
• For embarrassing you or humiliating you – forgive.
• For not showing appreciation when you thought it was due – forgive.
• For not recognizing when you needed support – forgive.
• For making demands you were incapable of providing – forgive.
• For not making allowances for your broken humanity – forgive.

If you happen to be the child, not the mom, who is reading this list, I encourage you to go back and read this list again. For Mother’s Day, ditch the cheap store-bought gifts and give her a gift that will change your life. Read the list above and forgive her for the selfsame trespasses that she committed against you.As with any hurt, unrealized expectations can set in and the already painful wounds get infected.  When this happens, God’s blessing for multi-generational extended family can be lost.Forgiveness is the disinfectant.

• Forgiveness is a decision that leads to feeling better – not the other way around.
• Words are a powerful force. Speak words of forgiveness and speak words of acceptance.
• Forgiveness means to not keep bringing the matter up. Move on. The further away you move from the wrong, the less it will hurt. If you keep going back to visit the hurt, it will merely hurt more – and it has a way of morphing into something bigger than it originally was.
• Who was right and who was wrong is not the point of forgiveness. Let it go.
• Forgiveness brings healing and blessing.

You deserve to find peace. Forgiveness is the way back to the solid path.“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” – Matthew 6:12