meanderings

Love your enemies

Why does God, through Jesus, ask us to do that?
Most people think it is a directive that helps the enemy, and consequently try to avoid this teaching or rationalize why it means something else...

But I believe we are told to love our enemy because of the life bringing peace it brings to our soul.

Every adolescent goes through a period where the parent is the enemy. Some enter this stage early, some never leave it.

My mother and I have had a pretty rocky relationship. I hope there were times when my mother felt proud of me, but mostly, I think that I was a disappointment. Or maybe worse. I did not follow the narrow path that was laid before me. I questioned things that were not to be questioned. I'm sure that it never entered my mother's head that I could be right about something her religious gurus said I was wrong about. Some bozo on a religious radio station was certain to know more about public education than I, as a mere teacher in the system for over 20 years, would know.

My mother lived most of her life in extreme fear and an unhealthy amount of anger. She never learned patience with her own mother. She couldn't let go of their lifelong battle and find the gentleness than Nannie may have found a comfort. It was not until the Alzheimer's attacked my mother that she seemed to appreciate my company or my attempts to do for her what she could no longer do for herself.

My mother hurt me... often and sometimes deeply, but I am no longer angry at her. I have forgiven her because I have seen her. I have been given the grace to see her, not as my mother, not in her relationship to me, but simply as Martha, a bright, sensitive human being who grew up afraid, with a bipolar mother who loved her and hurt her in equal parts, as she came to do for many of her own children.

I like to think that my own angry rebellion opened the eyes of both my parents as to what mattered most, and that my two younger siblings benefited from that. I know that both my parents probably enjoyed Jonathan more than any of their other children... not that they loved him more, just that they were a bit wiser in their love.

I grew up in a family rich in love. Dysfuntional, as all families are being made of imperfect human beings, but loving. My mother loved me to the best of her ability.

And I'm good with that. I wasn't always. The last hard thing I had to forgive my mother for was when she hurt my daughter. I had spent years fighting the easy way of slipping into old patterns, of making the same mistakes. (I'm sure I made new ones, and in some cases, maybe even worse ones) And then my mother hurt my child in the same way she hurt me so many times before. It was the last hard thing... but God saw me through it.

Today I joy in offering my mother the kindness that she never found for her own mother. She gave her mother love and duty, but it never gave her pleasure. I have been gifted with mercy more than my mother was, and I am thankful.

Yes, my mother benefits from my forgiveness; but she is the lesser recipient. The greatest grace has been given to me.