As I was eating dinner one night at Panera recently, I
took notice of an older married couple who had seated themselves across from
me.
I sipped my coffee and quietly anticipated the coming
conversation of grandchildren, bills, or upcoming vacations, but the air
between our tables rested only silence.
The husband neither spoke nor gestured to his wife; and
neither did she initiate or show signs of desiring words said, though, as a
woman, I’m sure there was some desire present.
It wasn’t a relaxed, comfortable silence—though maybe it was comfortable
for them after years of conditioned habit—but instead a moment where two lives
strung together were now sharing nothing but a bagel.
I thought to myself, No. Not in
my marriage, I pray, will this be. There
will be conversation! Relationship! And
not just a pretext or a contractual bond!
And no sooner as this thought passed did God place a
convicting image before me.
Dinner tables of years passed, evenings spent in an
eerily similar silence.
I envisioned my family sitting at some of our favorite
haunts, making our way through dinner with nothing but the weather to be
discussed.
Painful.
It’s painful to sit at a table with your parents, having nothing
to share, nothing in which to commiserate, or celebrate. I don’t believe that our lives were so boring
and bland that we could not have made conversation, but really that my life has
been spent not only hiding myself from my parents, but in our early years, two
working people in a failing, troubled marriage not having the energy to invest
in the lives of their children.
The mix has left a wall between us, albeit it one that
has slowly begun to be chiseled down after my salvation.
In a sense my parents don’t really know me. They know of
me. Of the Jamie I let them see, keeping
to myself and from them the parts that I am terrified of them to see, which is
exactly what makes me, me.
What do I have to fear, preventing me from sharing myself
with them?
They cannot kick me out of their home in disappointment,
as they would have when I was younger.
Would they love me less?
Surely not.
I imagine sitting across from them, sharing my life as it
has unfolded since I left Stockton. The
despair, the dependency on men—of which my father was all too quite aware, the abuse,
the positive test results, the miscarriage—and what if I did? What if I shared these pieces of my life with
them?
I see Dad’s face crumple, only hurting from the pain that
I’ve endured, all of which he meant for me never to endure. I hear Mom cry as she wonders if her path
directly led me to lead the same one.
They would seek to blame themselves.
But there would be no blame to be had.
Only forgiveness.
Only repentance.
Maybe only then would I be able to justly describe my
love for Jesus. Maybe then they would understand
how on the darkest nights it was God who held me, who saved me. Because sometimes we can’t understand the
glory if we can’t see the destruction from which we were saved. I would share God’s forgiveness of his
daughter, and how she repented to Him.
Maybe they don’t understand why I worship such a God if I
have not also shared with them Who He is and what He has done and how He has
loved me. How much He loves me. And how being a Christian does not mean that
one is suddenly perfect, but that one is truly loved. Redeemed.
Still imperfect, but redeemed.
Every year I return to California, I grow a little less
reserved and ever more confident, declaring the love and devotion I have for
sweet Jesus who saved me and God who has spared me.
I wonder, if at the end of 27, looking into the eyes of
my parents, if I can tell them all that has happened to me, and not only have
them understand the heart of their daughter, but the heart of the Father who
watches over us with a love so great that its clarity is sometimes only felt through pain, seen in emptiness, and can sometimes best express itself in the
unexplainable.
Of all the people in the world, it is my parents for whom
I most desperately crave salvation. But
greater than me, it is for God that they were created and it is by God that
they are most loved. Should my surrender
of pride and fear in return press into their hearts the love of God, how unjust
it would be for me to lock it away, kept in a box out of reach of those who are
most precious. And if who I am,
who He made me to be, translates to them in such a way that they understand to God
they are precious then it is right that a surrender of my soul's deepest hurts should joyously be made.
