Every person is born with a clean slate. We move slowly forward, making choices and learning as we go. Making mistakes. Sinning. Battling fear. Yet, if we make the time to take a bird’s eye view, we will see that, even though there have been those dark place in our lives, there is also someone who has been learning, growing, changing, and loving the best they can. The paths chosen and gifted by God are lived in the best way we know how, yet not perfectly. We have impact those around us, sometimes offering life and sometimes inflicting scars.
In the end we must embrace those we have lived our life with and beg for forgiveness for the scars inflicted, and then ask to be seen for more than those things in life that were hurtful — our failures.
I want to be known for more than just the mistakes made and the scars I inflicted. I want to be known for all the time in between — the times when God enabled me to make my best efforts and there was victory and growth. The times I did well and followed hard after God. I want my friends and family to remember me for more than my faults.
The way they would want to be remembered.
In a culture where blame is heaped on the shoulders of parents, or some other offender, I want to see those humans through a God given lens and free myself to enjoy the good in them—if at all possible.
The way I want others to see me.
This is a gift God has enabled me to give to my precious mom. To free her up from focusing only on her failures. To see her as a person who has lived a life and to love the whole of who she is, not just the bits and pieces that, in her humanity, may have hurt me.
There’s so much more to her than that.
