So, where did we leave off? (LINK)
Was I saying that I came from an unhappy family?
What does it mean to have a happy family?
Who knew that I'd be exploring such difficult questions in a silly little blog that is supposed to be about non-cancer. Yet, here we are.
My family is special. I remember a childhood of laughter, silliness, bad jokes, talking lobsters, and spontaneous trips to unexpected locales.
I also remember a childhood with tears, fear, hurt and misunderstanding, and being misunderstood. As a shy introvert from an exceptionally loud family of extroverts, I spent too much time with my own thoughts, wishing I fit in better. I had feelings I didn't understand, couldn't put words to, and as an early reader who read "at the college level" by the time I was 11, it was unusual to be unable to find the words I needed.
We fought (and still fight). We cried (and still cry). We try to understand each other, even though it often feels like we all came from different planets. Are all families like that? I honestly don't know.
We had love, but we also had an unfair share of unhappiness. Well, I call it unfair, but I don't know if that is true either.
We have hard conversations, hard feelings, and hard hearts, and all the wishing in the world can't undo some of the terrible things we've done, or unsay the terrible things we've said. Lamott says,
"Forgiving people doesn’t necessarily mean you want to meet them for lunch. It means you try to undo the Velcro hook. Lewis Smedes said it best: “To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” (Lamott 117).As family, we should always be prepared to forgive, because we are family, right? Even the Bible says we should turn the other cheek, so forgiveness is the word of the day, yes?
Maybe.
For me, explicit forgiveness is not free. Again we come back to the idea of grace. I am not full of grace, I might be full of something, but grace ain't it. Forgiveness comes at the cost of acknowledging the wrong, committing to never repeat it, and apologizing. An apology involves the words "I am sorry" or "I apologize for the hurt I caused to you."
A non-pology might include the words "I'm sorry if..." or "I'm sorry but..."
"I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings" is NOT an apology. "I'm sorry but I didn't mean it that way" is NOT an apology. I'm sorry for anything that I might have done" is not an apology. It is so difficult to find grace when trust is broken. Trust might be healed if the apology includes a commitment to not repeat the transgression. Trust might be healed if the transgressor takes some action toward healing. Trust might be healed by respecting boundaries.
I am no expert on grace, but I have so many expectations. I love the idea of grace, of love undeserved and without conditions. I want to learn that grace.
My therapist tried to teach me about giving myself grace. Do you want to know what is even harder? Giving grace to others. But as Smedes above said, forgiveness sets us free. Perhaps that is the grace that I am looking for. That doesn't mean that my heart is left open to be trampled by any and all who wish to stomp on it. The doesn't mean that I have no hurts left, because I do. But in my quest for giving myself grace, I have to try to let go of those hurts and move forward. Unconditional love is not the same as unconditional trust, but maybe we can learn to get closer to that, no matter how far away that grace might seem.
Read this book. It is by far one of the best I've stumbled across in a while.
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