Reconciling with Your Family of Origin: Learning to "Reset to Zero"

For a long time there was a tug-of-war between my mother and me. I often felt she didn't accept me, and little things, one after another, settled on my heart.

So after I came to faith, even though I knew God wanted me to forgive, at first my forgiveness was just grimly putting up with things: God says so, so I'll do it. Many nights I cried under the covers. But looking back today, that first, clumsy forgiveness mattered a great deal.

Learning to "Reset to Zero"

Once, as I was praying at home, I thought about what was between my mother and me, and I was still hurting. God said to me, "Can you reset it to zero? When you buy rice and flour for her, when you pick out gifts for her, think of it as doing it for me." In that moment I truly felt God's love pouring down on me. I said to God: All right, I'm willing to reset it to zero.

Blessing Gets Passed Down Too

Later my daughter was playing "Flowers of the Field" at home, and she said, "Mom, this was Grandma's favourite song." I told her Grandma was a woman of prayer, so play it well. And she played it over and over.

Another time I came home from the supermarket with a lot of shopping. My daughter, twelve or thirteen then, saw I was tired and said, "Mom, you go on up, I'll bring these." In that moment there was a voice in my heart: "See? You honour your mother, and your child honours you."

When we choose to reconcile and choose to let go,
God himself plants blessing in our homes.

Seeing My Mother Through New Eyes

After I "reset to zero," God wanted to take me one step further. Once I was with a few brothers and sisters, and one sister talked about caring for her sick mother. God had told her to look at her mother with compassion, and after that, the way her mother sang while she was ill seemed especially lovely to her.

Those words went straight into my heart. I'm someone who grew up carrying wounds. Some hurtful words from my childhood had been living inside me all along, so when I looked at my mother, I was still wearing wounded glasses: any little thing she did, I read as her not caring about me. Deep down I had already reached a verdict: I'm the one who's always good to her, and she's the one who owes me. In that moment I finally understood that the problem wasn't only my mother. It was also the way I looked at her. The truth is, in her circumstances, she had already loved me with everything she had.

Seeing God's Good Purpose

Since then I feel that God really has taken that wound out of my heart. Now when I think of my mother, all I think of is good things: because of her, I came to know God; because of her, I met my husband; and it was she who brought me to Canada.

My older sister often says that our relationship with our parents is the foundation of all our relationships. When you can understand your parents' hearts and be reconciled with them, a lot of other relationships can be reconciled too. I give thanks for having walked through this season. If I hadn't, I couldn't talk with you today about family of origin, and I couldn't give people who are struggling in it right now a little comfort from my story.