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The Healing Journey: When Parents Wound and Forgiveness Beckons
I hadn't seen my father for ten years when we pulled up to that VA housing in Sarasota. My husband spotted him first-forty pounds heavier than I remembered. I froze, unsure how to play this scene, settling for a distant hug. We'd flown from Alaska so my six children could meet their 84-year-old grandfather, though I'd warned the older ones he probably wouldn't talk to them. At Sarasota Beach, my attempts to question him about his past evaporated as quickly as his vague answers, his eyes always looking toward the ocean.
This book has become a cultural touchstone for those navigating the complex terrain of parental forgiveness. Oprah featured it on her "Soul Sunday" series, noting how it addresses "the universal struggle we all face with family wounds." When Taylor Swift mentioned it in a 2019 interview about her own complicated family relationships, sales surged overnight. Mental health professionals regularly recommend it as essential reading for clients working through family trauma, and religious leaders across denominations have embraced its balanced approach to forgiveness that honors both faith and psychological healing.
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The Burden of Running: Escaping Our Family Stories
It's my wedding day. At twenty, I find it scandalous to think of parents being involved. I walk alone down the aisle-of course! I've been running my own life for a while and don't need my first walk with my father to begin now. Duncan and I will live in Alaska on a small wilderness island, commercial fishing and traveling. We'll build a new life five thousand miles away from the claustrophobic houses and small towns of my childhood. Surely that's far enough to be freed from my past.
My sister Laurie ran away from home at fifteen. She escaped through her window many nights, running two miles to a friend's house, always returning before morning. But one night, her seventeen-year-old boyfriend picked her up in his car. When the police finally found her months later, she refused to return home. She only came back at eighteen to marry her boyfriend.
There are so many ways to run. William fled his volatile mother. Vonnie married at nineteen to escape. Randi disappeared into anorexia and excessive exercise. Dena immersed herself in children and pretended everything was fine. Lisa cut off her father who abandoned her. Jimmy lost himself in achievement.
We leave home for college, early marriages, jobs-often not realizing we're running from our pasts while desperately building new identities. But the construct seldom holds. Dena had panic attacks during ordinary tasks. Vonnie's marriage collapsed into alcoholism and near-suicide. Lisa brought suspicion into her marriage, certain her husband would abandon her just as her father had.
The past reaches in with Mother's Day and Father's Day cards that never fit our stories. Or we see tender parent-child moments in movies that make us cry. When asked about my father at a college event, I bluntly told the president: "He was a traveling salesman, but he couldn't sell anything, so he was unemployed a lot. He works in a factory now. He's an atheist." His plastic smile told me I was judged and found wanting-because of my father.
Eventually, phone calls come that change everything. Vonnie's sister called to say their mother was dying and wanted to see her. Despite twenty years of separation and fear, Vonnie visited. Her dying mother, frail with Alzheimer's, opened her eyes, recognized her oldest child, and whispered, "I shouldn't have been so hard on you" before crying. This moment began to change Vonnie's life.
Like Jonah, we run from what God calls us to do. When we run from our stories, we run from ourselves. Our memories form the underpinning of our identities. As Dan Allender wrote, forgetting "exacts a terrible price" of "repetition, an insincere way of relating, a loss of self." Worse, we "lose another moment to experience God's mysterious redemption in our lives."
Maybe the running stops here, with enough courage to move into a new story. Like Jonah, who finally confessed and urged the sailors to throw him overboard so they might be saved. No one can run forever.
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Daring to Confess: When Parents Fail Us
My father was eighty-eight when he left the Jefferson Center after thirteen years. His room had been cluttered with newspapers, magazines, and dirty ashtrays. He'd survived on coffee, cigarettes, and ice cream since divorcing my mother. Now headed to a nursing home, I found something had changed in me-perhaps inspired by Micah's words about acting justly and loving mercy.
In my memories, he was always a traveling salesman being fired from jobs, frequently vanishing. He had lived with his parents until thirty, married my mother through a cycling club, and had wanted to be a writer. Without his income, our family survived by restoring old colonial houses under my mother's leadership. We worked through weekends, summers, and after school-tearing down walls, sanding floors, tarring roofs. We lived in cold New Hampshire houses heated by single woodstoves, carried water when wells ran dry. My father helped with some heavy work, but it was mostly us children.
My father had fought in the war, failing out of navigation school and eventually joining the infantry. He told one story of narrowly escaping death when he inexplicably jumped off a tank moments before a mortar hit it. When I asked if he thought it was God, he merely shrugged. He had been a Christian Scientist, then nothing, then an atheist fascinated by UFOs, watching for them every clear summer night.
Twenty years ago, I received a rare letter from him saying he had read the New Testament and believed in Jesus, asking for forgiveness. I cried bitterly for days, having never thought to pray for him and unsure if I could forgive his neglect. A year later, after exchanging letters, he returned all the books I'd sent, writing: "Don't call me Daddy anymore... Don't talk to me about God or church."
I write this as remembrance and confession. My story isn't horrific compared to others, but it matters. When we confess the sins of our fathers and mothers, our words align with lived truth, not wishful thinking. The biblical writers weren't afraid of honest lament-David, Moses, even Jesus spoke words that acknowledge the real conditions of our lives.
Others have their own confessions: Daniel's father hiding behind newspapers, Tina's mother never picking her up after practice, Brandon's father missing his games. Then harder things: Jeanne's minister father refusing to believe her sexual abuse, Molly feeling unwanted by both parents, writing daily about their affairs, anger, and dysfunction.
A few years ago, my sister Laurie revealed that our father had sexually abused her for years. I was stunned, angry I hadn't known, convinced I could have stopped it. "Dad ruined my life," she said evenly. Yet two years later, we rented a condo in Florida to visit him, taking his arm, smiling and being kind as if he had been good to us.
Confession requires courage and truth. There is no hierarchy for misfortune or tragedy-suffering comes both from random devastation beyond our control and from deliberate acts of cruelty that can only be called evil.
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Becoming Human: Seeing Parents as Fellow Travelers
Moving beyond our own pain, we must consider our parents' stories to gain a larger view of who they are as people apart from the harm they've done. This isn't easy-we often maintain distance, not wanting to see similarities between us and them.
I visited my father's brother, my only remaining uncle, to learn more about my father's life. I discovered he had always been a loner who failed at multiple endeavors-navigation school, clerical work, various sales jobs-and was a disappointment to his family. At a family reunion years later, he remained uncomfortable and nearly silent, unable to connect even with his grandchild.
I finally realized: "He is not loved. And he himself will not-or cannot-love." This insight shifted my anger to compassion, recognizing that my father suffered from "the suffering of being unable to love." I came to see that she and her siblings weren't the only ones wounded on life's road.
Diana avoided her mother for years due to her unpredictable behavior, including communication cutoffs, affairs, and suicide attempts. As Diana examined her mother's childhood, she realized her mother had likely been sexually abused. This understanding helped Diana develop sympathy, seeing her mother's destructive behaviors as attempts to cope with unaddressed trauma.
Michelle's father repeatedly knocked her unconscious when she came home drunk as a teenager, calling her "the black sheep." After fifteen years of estrangement, when her sister died, Michelle saw her father's humanity-his suffering, sacrifice, and struggles raising nine children while working physically demanding jobs. Their reconciliation culminated in a tender moment when he touched her face lovingly and said "I love you too"-their first loving contact since childhood. He died the day after their final visit, wearing the Coast Guard belt buckle she had given him.
I flew to see my father in a rehab facility, finding him curled on his side, frail and toothless. When I touched his shoulder, his eyes filled with tears and he began silently weeping-something I'd never witnessed before. We both shook with sobs for his sad life, his breaking body, his tangled mind. The stroke had rendered him more fully human than I'd ever seen him, and I viewed him through eyes of mercy.
Our parents were once children themselves with hopes and dreams. Can we see them as separate people within their own stories? Though adults are responsible for dealing with their past hurts rather than inflicting them on the next generation, we too must take responsibility for our own healing journey.
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The Cost of Unforgiveness: Living in Jonah's Terrain
What happens when we refuse to look at our wounded parents on the other side of the road? William sits in my kitchen, tenderly stroking our puppy while describing his rageful mother who screamed constantly at her sons, making home life unbearable. His face alternates between anger and hurt before stiffening when I ask about forgiveness. "I know we're called to forgive, but I never thought about forgiving her. I don't care how or why she is the way she is. I'm married now, hardly see her anymore, and it doesn't hurt, so I don't need to forgive."
Often we don't consider the cost of not forgiving while thinking forgiveness itself costs too much. My brother Todd and I share memories over lunch of our childhood poverty-the rare chicken we'd gnaw to the bone, the cracked eggs we lived on, going to bed hungry, stealing candy bars to ease our hunger, wearing ugly hand-me-downs that invited mockery. All shaped by our father who refused to get suitable work. We'd been bitter and angry, walking past him for decades, not seeing or caring to see.
To choose unforgiveness is to choose vengeance-telling their secrets, refusing help, withholding ourselves, eroding reputations-all attempts to ease our pain by making others pay.
My own attempt at revenge against my father-in-law DeWitt's chronic lateness to meals left me with only guilt and bitterness. This takes us back to Jonah's terrain. After his time in the fish, Jonah reluctantly obeyed God and preached to Nineveh. When the city repented and God spared them, Jonah erupted in anger: "I knew you are a gracious and compassionate God!" he shouted, furious that his enemies received mercy. He'd forgotten he himself had been recipient of God's compassion when rescued from drowning.
The film Unforgiven illustrates this danger perfectly. After a prostitute is disfigured, the sheriff demands payment of horses as compensation. The brothel women offer a reward to kill the wrongdoer, setting off a cycle of revenge where everyone keeps score and seeks retribution. As William Munny says, "We all have it comin'." The movie shows a hellish world where everyone keeps records of wrongs, no one forgives, and everyone pays with escalating violence.
Holding onto unforgiveness can become our only connection to someone who hurt us. We believe our pain is the only accounting for their wrongs, and unforgiveness assures us of our right to anger and resentment. While righteous anger has its place in healing-empowering us out of denial and victimhood-there comes a point when continued bitterness becomes destructive.
We struggle with the tension between justice and mercy, just as Jonah did. If those who wronged us are forgiven too easily, when do they suffer as we have? Our hate can feel like power, but it's the wrong kind-a false protection that often turns against us.
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The Heart of Forgiveness: From Prodigal to Pardoned
The journey toward forgiveness begins with recognizing our own stories. At a rehab center's ice cream parlor, I watch my aging father eat his single scoop of sugar-free vanilla while another resident rages against restrictions, demanding more ice cream he cannot have. This scene captures the helplessness of aging-how much we lose as we grow old, how much is stolen from us.
To understand forgiveness, we must turn to the tenderest story I know-the parable of the prodigal son. A father had two sons working in the family business. The younger demanded his inheritance early, essentially declaring his father dead to him. The son squandered everything on wild living until famine struck and he found himself feeding pigs and starving. Remembering his father's generosity even to hired servants, he decided to return home, hoping only to be taken back as a servant. But while he was still far off, his father saw him, ran to him with arms outstretched, and embraced him before he could even finish his confession.
This father is God Himself, running to welcome errant children home. The story continues with the older brother refusing to join the celebration, angry at the undeserved mercy shown to his wastrel sibling. Like Jonah, he couldn't endure mercy shown to someone else-blind to all he'd received. The father reminded him: "Son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours!" This story is about us all-whether we ran away or stayed resentfully, we've all rebelled against our Father.
When Peter asked Jesus how many times he should forgive-suggesting seven times-Jesus answered "seventy-seven times," removing all accounting. To explain, Jesus told of a servant forgiven an unpayable debt by a king, who then refused to forgive another servant's small debt to him. The king, enraged, imprisoned the unforgiving servant until he could pay everything.
The cancellation of our debts isn't free. It cost two trees, a hammer, iron spikes, torn flesh-the body, blood, and life of God's Son. Christianity uniquely claims everything wrong can be utterly forgiven by God Himself, simply for the sincere asking. Just before dying, Jesus said, "It is finished!"-using an accounting term meaning "paid in full." Our massive, unpayable debt is covered.
During my visit to my father in rehab, I found myself in an unexpected position. Unable to speak, he listened as I read from Isaiah about God's mercy and free pardon. When I asked what held him back from faith, he painfully wrote a single word: "trust." Despite his history of reading atheist literature, he was surprisingly open, even writing that he looked forward to my "words of wisdom." In that moment, I realized I was no longer trapped in resentment. Everything I did for him on that trip, he had never done for me as a child or adult. Yet the harsh accountant's voice in my head began to quiet.
When do we stop expecting our parents to pay for our childhood disappointments? Our purpose is to bring forth beauty from ashes and become Christlike not because of our parents but often in spite of them. We must work through forgiveness to create something better for future generations.
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Honoring the Dishonorable: Finding Dignity in Difficult Relationships
The command to honor our parents presents a profound challenge when those parents have abandoned or hurt us. In the film "Being Flynn," we see a father who returns after decades of absence, demanding help from the son he never raised. Similarly, many of us have experienced parents who left-physically or emotionally-creating wounds that forgiveness alone seems insufficient to heal. Yet the fifth commandment still stands: "Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land."
I experienced my father's abandonment at twelve when he emptied our bank account and left our family of seven with almost nothing. We survived on canned mackerel and twenty-five-cent cracked eggs while my mother trained for employment. Though he eventually returned under compulsion, there was no celebration-no fatted calf or ring for his finger.
Jimmy grew up with an abusive Chinese father who beat him for small failures and never acknowledged his achievements. When Jimmy married without his father's permission, his father refused to attend the wedding and maintained stubborn silence for years. Yet when his parents unexpectedly visited twelve years later, Jimmy and his wife Joy chose to show them generosity and love. "He was the prodigal father to me," Jimmy explained. "As soon as they stepped toward us, we moved toward them." Though his father never said "I love you," Jimmy cared for him through his final illness, finding healing by extending honor despite the past abuse. As Albert Camus wrote, "There is merely bad luck in not being loved; there is tragedy in not loving."
We're called to respect our parents not because of their character but because of their position. For reasons we may never fully understand, God chose these particular people to give us life. When we honor our parents, we honor God Himself. The command doesn't require warm feelings; honor is a mandate rooted in action toward the good of the other, beginning with an honest accounting of our own part in troubled relationships.
Honor manifests differently based on personalities and circumstances. Larry called his abusive mother to ask forgiveness for his bitterness. Dena entered therapy to understand family dynamics. Keven maintained contact with a mother who abandoned him. Stephen met a father he'd never known. Randi honored her controlling father by establishing healthy boundaries. Sometimes honoring means resistance to destructive patterns.
I discovered my distant father likely had schizoid personality disorder, explaining his emotional flatness and isolation. This knowledge brought relief-it wasn't our fault, and there was nothing I could have done. Yet questions remained about responsibility versus illness.
My siblings and I flew to Florida to see our father-our first gathering in sixteen years. We rented a house and brought him there for an afternoon. We were tender and solicitous, not requiring what he couldn't provide. We welcomed this dishonorable man who had chosen solitude, offering our best chair, food, and love that multiplied between us like loaves and fishes.
Setting boundaries preserves relationships by preventing dishonor-they're not steel doors but loving ways of saying "no, not now, not here." Honor and boundaries work together; we cannot have one without the other. When parents are dishonorable, find what you can honor, no matter how small. Giving honor is your choice to be honorable, which helps your heart and honors your Father in heaven.
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Final Mercies: Finding Peace in Life's Last Chapter
As parents age and approach death, we hope for some acknowledgment of their part in our pain. In their greatest hour of need, Jesus showed us how to offer blessing instead of curses-even from the cross, He rasped "Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they are doing." In our parents' final moments, we can offer mercy that changes both their ending and our future.
Vonnie experienced this grace when she forgave her abusive mother with Alzheimer's, touching and comforting her as she died. Gayle spoke forgiveness to her unconscious schizophrenic father who had tyrannically controlled their home, saying words she didn't yet feel but knew she needed to speak. Deanna, after years of anger toward her harsh father, found unexpected love in his final days when his vulnerability allowed a connection never before possible.
Not everyone gets this chance-Sheryl's father committed suicide, leaving their relationship unresolved. My own final visit with my emotionally absent father ended without acknowledgment or goodbye, yet I struggled with whether to return when he was dying. Our forgiveness is incomplete compared to God's perfect mercy, but it frees both parent and child from the cycle of condemnation.
When death approaches, there's an opening in our hearts where we glimpse eternity and what truly matters. Grieving allows us to process our sadness and say what needs to be said. Being present matters more than finding perfect words.
Gift-love versus Need-love means choosing to love despite our parents' failings, not because of them. This higher calling is possible when we no longer depend on their affirmation for our emotional wellbeing. We find safety elsewhere and know we'll be okay with or without their response.
Three months after our father died, Laurie, Clark and I returned to Florida in the sweltering June heat. We walked slowly along a quiet, beige beach, each carrying a Ziplock bag of ashes. Together on this empty beach, we shared memories of our father, acknowledging both the good and difficult parts of his life. We waded into the water, read from Psalm 145, and scattered his ashes into the ocean he loved. Our remembrance wasn't extraordinary, but it was ours-the particular burden of memories we are responsible for shaping into our lives.
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Becoming Joseph: Finding Redemption in Our Stories
We've toured the lands of our childhoods, seen ourselves and our parents wounded by the roadside, and glimpsed God's forgiving heart. Now we follow Joseph, who like Jonah landed in a foreign place he never would have chosen. Joseph stands in his dining hall facing his eleven brothers who sold him into slavery but have now come seeking grain during a seven-year drought that Joseph's wisdom helped Egypt survive. Remarkably, he comforts them: "Do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here. It was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you."
How was it possible for Joseph to forgive such betrayal? I've witnessed similar miracles of forgiveness. Vonnie, who was repeatedly dunked underwater by her sadistic father as a child, found healing through baptism, choosing to forgive her father though she doesn't know if he's alive or dead. Keven, abandoned by his family, spent decades mourning before realizing, like Joseph, that it wasn't his place to judge them. Even in war-torn Sierra Leone, Sahr publicly forgave Nyumah, his childhood friend who was forced to kill Sahr's father and cripple Sahr himself. Their reconciliation transformed not just their relationship-with Nyumah now helping build Sahr a new home-but their entire community.
When I began this book while caring for my father, I couldn't imagine any positive outcome. What could I expect from a man with schizoid personality disorder who seemed incapable of relationships? I initially sought forgiveness only for my own freedom from negative emotions. But I've discovered a much larger freedom-stepping down from the judge's bench and transferring my father from my judgment to God's utterly just sentencing.
Forgiveness is powerful enough to break generational sins and open our hearts to others' suffering. It begins with us but doesn't end there, empowering us to reach out to our families and beyond. The first steps toward reconciliation with family members lead us toward healing other relationships. We approach with humility, knowing we've all sinned, supported by community. Forgiveness isn't private or a feeling to conjure-it's an attitude seeking others' good regardless of deservedness.
Our freedom manifests differently for each person. For me, it meant sitting at my mother-in-law's feet cutting her toenails before her death. For Jeanne, it meant reconciling with in-laws across cultural differences. For Dena, forgiveness freed her from seeing God as vengeful like her father. Laura learned to love her father "as is," transferring that acceptance to other relationships. Sheryl built an open home without secrets after her father's suicide. Keven released his parents from expectations, and Vonnie's forgiveness drew her closer to God.
Like Joseph, many of us were forced into unwanted situations, but God can use what was intended for evil for good. Joseph's forgiveness wasn't immediate-he experienced shock, abandonment, resentment, despair, and finally surrender to God. When reunited with his brothers, Joseph maintained safe boundaries and tested them over time to assess their trustworthiness before reconciling.
While forgiveness doesn't require the offender's remorse, true reconciliation does. We must consider: Can the offender identify with our heartache? See our perspective? Develop empathy for our suffering? Joseph acknowledged the truth of his betrayal rather than pretending it never happened, but then shifted from blame to recognizing God's redemptive purpose.
Regardless of our offenders' willingness to participate in healing, we must move forward with forgiveness because it's right for us and for the world beyond us. Though imperfect, every act of forgiveness echoes God's own, pointing toward the day when our forgiveness will "sparkle in its full splendor."
