Words of Love and Forgiveness that Rocked My World

By Heidi McLaughlin –

When I was a teenager, my mother was mean to me. She made me pick up my clothes from the bedroom floor and place them on hangers in the closet. She forced me to make my bed, get out of bed before 11:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning and dry dishes every night. If my mom really loved me she would stop being so nasty. She should just let me do what I want and I would be a much nicer and happier person. Of course the unfairness of all those demands made me rebel. I would shout back, disregard curfews and blur our family values.

I’m a grown woman now and I realize my mom’s “meanness” forged my character and shaped me into the courageous, smart and flexible woman that I am today. But I must confess there were times where I don’t think my mother fully understood me. Consequently that translates into, “I don’t think my mother loved me the way I needed to be loved.”

I buried my sweet, godly mother December 6th, 2013. The last number of weeks my mom was in a Hospice House in Kelowna, British Columbia, and I spent endless hours and days sitting by her bed, holding her hand, praying with her and loving on her. The clock ticked away many silent, hours as I reflected on the healing and love that my mother and I shared over the past decades. Over the last forty years my mom’s relationship with Jesus had become so intimate, sweet and powerful that Jesus’ love emanated from her every gesture and word. God’s spirit was fully awake and alive in mom’s spirit as we shared many stories and had intimate moments of remembering things from the past.

Two weeks before my mother passed into Glory to be with her Heavenly Father, she opened her eyes, clearly looked at me and quietly spoke these words: “Forgive me if I did not love you enough.” Those words rocked my world. I didn’t think I needed to hear those words anymore but evidently I did. A surge of healing and love flowed through my soul like nothing I had experienced before. The Heavenly Father’s love was so evident in my mother that it literally poured out of her spirit into the dry and empty places in my soul. That sentence erased any pain, resentment or wounds that obviously were still open. I felt as though I had been given new life, more confidence and more freedom for my future.

My mother was able to express those words of love and forgiveness because she knew of the beauty and power of her Heavenly Father’s love. She first received this radical, transforming love when she began her relationship with Jesus in 1945.

My rebellious nature held off following in my mother’s footsteps until I was 32. My whole life was transformed when I finally admitted that I needed Jesus to forgive my sins and receive His radical, restoring love. But I never expected the love of Jesus to completely rock my world. And it did. It healed my marriage, made me a more loving friend, a kinder mother and a wiser colleague. It also brought down the walls between me and my mother and we began a journey of understanding our different occupations, personalities and points of view. Because of Jesus’ love now growing in both of our hearts; that love was able to cross all barriers that had been placed by me in my rebellious teenage years. A final sentence from my mother’s dying lips completed a circle for a mother and daughter’s life.

“Thank You Jesus for filing our hearts with such love. Thank You that my sweet, precious mother was so filled with your spirit, so humble to your obedience, that her last breaths changed my life for all eternity. Thank You for your radical, relentless love that is with us until we take our last breath.”

Heidi McLaughlin Website: www.heartconnection.ca.