When Forgiveness Heals the Forgiver

This is a guest blog post by John Prin, who nearly 40 years ago helped me launch my career as a professional writer.

John Prin, during a visit to our home several years back.

If you are like many people, someone in your life has hurt you deeply in the past and you have struggled with feelings of anger, resentment and perhaps rage. Possibly you have buried or denied such fierce emotions over time and still hold a grudge that, when triggered, arouses fury. Harboring stormy emotions like these has become a burden, an aggravation that weighs on you and adds to your grief and sense of injustice. 

One day a good friend suggests an action available to you, to forgive. “No way! Not a chance!” you howl. But . . . But what if . . . What if you actually forgave that person? Fully. Whole-heartedly. No strings. Today’s blogpost offers such a story.

It starts when I was a boy of eleven facing a disturbing change: my parents relocated from our cherished home in Minneapolis to the outskirts of exurbia where they built a new oversized house on the wooded shore of a small lake. I came to discover that the move was largely because of my mother’s oversized ego and her need to show off the family’s rising career status and her own artistic decorating and gardening prowess. In short order, I said goodbye to classmates and playmates, then started sixth grade at a new “country” school seven distant miles away.

Until now my Mom had enjoyed hosting parties and celebrating annual festivities like Christmas, Halloween, and Easter as well as birthday parties and summer picnics. She was a typical loving mom in my brothers’ lives and my own. As for Dad, we all noticed his health was failing, just at the time when his career and reputation was rising in the eyes of his employer and clients.

Then “it” happened.

At the two-acre lot where construction of the new house was underway, Mom ordered me and my brothers Dave and Tom to move a grove of birch trees 150 yards to the lakeshore. Why? So she would enjoy viewing them someday through the then-imaginary picture window. We boys looked at Dad, who shrugged meekly, and our visit turned into a workday. Amid the natural wild beauty of the lake, the sunny day turned hot and we boys sweated in our T-shirts as we uprooted nineteen young trees, hauled them in a wheelbarrow, dug deep holes 150 yards away, and replanted them… all day until dark. I recall Dave saying, “She’s so bossy!” I nodded. “She must think we’re her slaves!”

Any project for Mom entailed working long hours, like the time Dave and I were told to tile the entire ground floor of the house. This meant covering 1800 square feet—a large rec room, a utility room, a furnace room, and a long hallway connecting them—with square one-foot vinyl tiles. We stared at the boxes of floor tiles on the bare concrete floor and a five-gallon bucket of black, sticky glue. Mom departed, leaving us to fend for ourselves with no clue about how or where to start. It was now a year later and Dad couldn’t even supervise because he was hospitalized on and off with complications from diabetes and neuropathy (and eventually an amputated leg). In all, the tiling took ten days, after school each day and on weekends.

More endless projects kindled hatred within me, deep hatred. Life in that fancy house became warped by Mom’s ambitions, all while her boys’ needs were neglected to meet her demands. Eventually, the family’s finances tanked and Dad took months off from work on medical leave.

During my college years, and later when I landed work in California’s TV industry, I put as much distance as possible (thousands of miles, months of silence) between myself and the mother I could not—could never—forgive. Dad’s death sparked the forced sale of “Mom’s palace on the pond.” When 25, I married a sweet, kind-hearted woman.

Twelve years passed.

Often my rage simmered in my soul and, when triggered, boiled over. One day a good friend responded to my intense agitation when I complained about how futile and wretched human life was. His name was Joe Steward, a Midwesterner like me with stars in his eyes for Hollywood fame; acting was his dream, screenwriting was mine. Too many rejections of my dramatic scripts over six years had soured my hopes for a movie career, and now I felt stymied.

“You’re mad at Hollywood like I am, John,” Joe said. “But it’s really because you’re not part of God's plan.”

     Shocked, I stammered, “God? Huh? What the . . . ?”

     “God wants to help you and has a plan for your life. But maybe it’s not screenwriting.”

     “A plan? Since when?”

     “Since his son Jesus walked the earth.”

     “Oh boy, are you serious?”

     After more back-and-forth, he uttered, “Jesus loves you, John. Know Jesus. Know God.”

This out-of-nowhere news flabbergasted me. I doubted, I debated, I fretted. During my growing-up years, my parents had never attended church, and God’s name, when spoken at home, ended in profanity. Joe’s suggestion that my feelings of powerlessness were spiritual confounded me, yet emotionally—like those powerless years as a teenager in Mom’s orbit—I sensed in my heart he was right. In a leap of faith, I dedicated my life to Jesus Christ.

Life flip-flopped from despair to euphoria. My wife and I located a welcoming church community where the believers’ love of Christ revitalized us. As I learned to pray, to worship, to read Scripture and be baptized, a light-hearted spirit lifted my woeful moods. My wife’s own journey of faith accompanied mine day by day.

“While walking under the sign I heard the voice...."

A year went by during which the memories of Mom’s abuse still lingered. Every so often I went for walks on a footpath along the base of the towering H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D sign—until the day I was walking alone and heard a voice in my head say, Forgive your mother. Startled, I stopped. Again the voice said, Forgive your mother. “No way! Impossible! It’s not fair!”

I drove home and told my wife, “Twice the voice said, Forgive your mother.” 

She replied, “Sounds like a good idea!” 

I growled, “No, I could never do that.” 

For the next few days, I brought up every objection possible with the Lord: Mom did not deserve forgiveness, she hadn’t apologized or admitted her faults, her behavior had made Dad miserable, my own hurt was too deep.

During a sermon, I heard a Bible verse that stirred me to the core: “Get rid of all bitterness and wrath and anger . . . forgive one another as God in Christ has forgiven you.” (Ephesians 4: 31) Oh boy, now what? So simple, so difficult. Yet, when I reflected on God’s freely offered forgiveness for my sins and misdeeds, something rigid inside me softened.

That day I knelt on the ground, and spoke aloud: “Mom, I … I … forgive … you.” Sobs welled up within me and tears exploded from my eyes. Huge waves of sorrow and grief dislodged from my soul like tons of lead. Years of ugly, murderous grudges dissolved right there in the Lord’s presence. Over time, memories of my younger Mom the first ten years of my life replaced the long history of my painful anger.

A bonus occurred that Christmas. With my wife and 5-year old daughter, I flew home to visit Mom. Although I had insisted on minimal contact for years, it was my idea to return and reconcile with her. As a widow for 14 years who’d never remarried, it was clear she had reflected on her past behavior and gained emotional insights into the feelings of others.

We knocked on the same door I had slammed behind me the day I swore to never return. When the door opened, Mom’s face lit up in a smile as she greeted us. Seeing my beaming face, she blurted out, “Johnny, you’ve changed! You look happy!”

“Yes, Mom, I’ve changed. I love you.”

Abruptly, her hands covered her face and she gasped, “That’s the first nice thing I’ve heard you boys say in twenty years!” Teary-eyed, she reached for my hands. “You really love me?”

“Yes, Mom. I’ve forgiven you.”

“Forgiven me . . .?”

I hugged her tenderly, then put my arm around her as we walked to the living room where we sat together. I confided how God had helped me let go of the decades of pain and anger, and she curled up in my arms as she welcomed the rekindled love I felt for her.

* * * 

During his career John Howard Prin has specialized in helping people who are recovering from addictions to experience the joys and rewards of lifelong recovery. John's talents as an addictions counselor and educator have motivated individuals in recovery groups and treatment centers to stay sober nationwide. You can visit his Amazon author page here.