We Retain What we Cannot Forgive
The eyes that held the numerous secrets of the past are full of compassion, love and pain. Behind the viewing window was a universal drive to survive. And I now understand why she hid the truth for the first eighteen years of my life.
A fragile little girl with black curls framing her face--the runt of the bunch from the back hills of Tennessee. Looking out for a family that suffered through the depression era, sometimes milling through dumpsters for something to eat, she'd sneak her sister's costume jewelry and pry the stones out with a fork. Anything that glittered would shine brighter than any of the days that darkened her life for so long.
My mother went on to high school where she blossomed into beauty queen, majorette and then married before graduation. A couple of years later and two children eighteen months apart -- she divorced . While living in Lordsburg New Mexico, she remarried and renamed her two babies to her new husband.
My older brother and I grew up never knowing the difference between a father and a dad or grandparents that felt they had to pretend. Words like adopted, half-brother and blood relative never entered into our minds much less our vocabulary.
Until 1978. That's when mother broke the silence. The years she'd spent protecting the buried truth were dug up in a seconds' time and my life was like a school girl repeating kindergarten for umpteen years in a row. How do I spell my real last name? Who am I for real?
I swore I'd never make the same mistake, but I did just that. I tried not to. All three girls had the same daddy and I made sure all three were born in the same town in the same hospital. I had this crazy idea that this would ensure my ability to break the crux I'd been born with.
Being unable to forgive my own mother's transgressions, I retained the very things I couldn't let go of. I wrestled them to the ground and couldn't get up. My mistakes were surpassed by anything my mother would have ever imagined to make. I repeated them over and over because I looked at my life as being an abandoned child. Consequently for years I lived out every day as an orphaned child might choose to live.
Over time, I learned to forgive and that forgiveness is a choice, not a feeling. My eyes were opened. I learned that I was actually a child of prodigy because of the extraordinary situation.
God gave us two eyes to view situations from at least two different ways. Instead of being an abandoned child, I saw the realization of being a wanted child. There are probably not too many unwanted adopted children. My parents weren't perfect and I'm not a perfect parent. But God isn't looking for the perfect, He's looking for the faithful.
"For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth, that He may
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