A 28-year-old woman I once met made a startling admission that has stayed with me ever since.
“How do you have a healthy relationship? I’ve never actually seen one.”
This young lady — I’ll call her Shawna — was raised by a single mom who was a drug addict. Shawna became a mother at 16 and the father of her child was serving time in prison. As her story poured out, my heart broke for her.
I’m no psychologist, but as I answered her question as best I could. “Respect,” I told her. “There has to be mutual respect.”
That’s because without respect, deep friendship just isn’t possible. It’s a fitting point to ponder as we march closer to the election and the holidays. Some of us may have lost respect for friends who strongly disagree with us on politics and matters of faith. There might be feelings of anger and betrayal. Some relationships may not ever be the same and that leaves us grieving at a time when social isolation is already being required due to the pandemic.
As I consider all this, I’m back in the late 1960’s in my childhood home. I grew up in a family of five siblings, with the oldest, Carol, being 12 years my senior. We weren’t close in age, but we shared a bedroom and she was like a little mother to me. One of my earliest memories — I was probably all of 4 years old — is of falling asleep in the bottom bunk while she read The Little Prince aloud to me in French. Perhaps it’s why I became so interested in language and words later on.
Sadly, my sister became caught up in the tumult of the 1960s and ‘70s and fell away from the practice of our faith. By then she had moved away to Boulder, Colorado, and we didn’t see her very often. She never stopped being that loving older sister, but as I grew toward adulthood, I could see we had fundamental differences in the way we were living. Carol was an extremely intelligent, generous person and though we disagreed on things, there was respect and love between us. We spoke by phone regularly and I tried to share a bit of my faith with her from time to time. In the early 2000s, I began to pray with her over the phone because she was open to it.
Then came 2004. We got into a conversation about the crisis in the Church and things grew rather heated. We both said some unthoughtful things but then she started in with hateful rhetoric. Now that I think about it, I recall the conversation took place during the school day and I was reclining on my youngest son’s bed — the bottom bunk. Ironic, isn’t it?
As she continued blasting the Church, I interrupted her: “You know what? You’ve gone too far this time, Carol! You can’t talk about my faith that way. I don’t have to take this from you!” I hung up the phone, steaming mad, filled with self-righteous indignation which over the course of time eventually grew into sadness. Not enough to make me want to call her though. I’d been disrespected for my faith and THAT was intolerable. (Today, in retrospect, I can more readily identify with her anger. Terrible sins have been committed by those whom we trusted, the effects of which are still painfully felt today.)
But back to the break in our sisterly relationship. The silence between us continued. Birthdays went by for both of us twice with neither of us sending a card or gift as we’d always done through the years.
Then, in December of 2006, she came to Arizona and stayed with my parents at their home. My mother called. “Your sister is here and she wants to see you. When can you come up?” Mom knew we had had a falling-out, but her words brooked no argument.
Later that day, I rang the doorbell at my parents’ home. As the door slowly swung open, I saw Carol standing there with tears in her eyes. “Can you ever forgive me?” she whispered. My arms came around her then and she embraced me. “Of course,” I told her. “I already have.” We both stood there, holding onto each other, lost in that moment. Looking back, I can’t remember if I apologized for my own part in the argument, but I’d like to think I did.
Two weeks later, on December 23, 2006 (yes, two days before Christmas) I was sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast when my phone rang.
The voice on the other end sounded distraught. “Carol is dead,” my mother said with an edge to her voice. “Drug overdose.” I could hear my father weeping in the background and I literally fell off my chair to the floor, devastated.
Christmas came and went and I was numb with grief. As the shocking news began to sink in, something occurred to me: a sense of humble appreciation that Carol and I had resolved our differences before it was too late. I don’t know if I could have ever forgiven myself if she had died while we were still not speaking to each other.
And so this is my message: Is there someone in your life you need to forgive? Is there someone in your life you need to ask forgiveness of? Please don’t put it off any longer.
We’ve heard it a thousand times, that life has no guarantees and that we can suddenly lose someone we love, but we never really believe it until it happens.
Fourteen years later, this is still a painful story for me to share. Only a few close friends know about what happened, but I’m writing about it today after a nudge from the Holy Spirit.
I’m not saying you have to tolerate disrespect in a relationship. What I am saying is, don’t run away from your feelings of anger or sorrow. Allow yourself to acknowledge and feel them. The next step — and it may take time — is to let them go. I like to sing “Let it go, let it go, let it go!” to the tune of the famous Christmas carol I may have just ruined for you, but it helps me a lot.
Let the pain and the anger and the frustration go. Give all of it, every drop, to God and let Him sort it out. Let Him fill you with His peace.
You’ve been wronged? Well, you’re in good company. Acknowledge the many occasions in which you yourself have wronged others. (You mean you haven’t ever been at fault in a relationship? You must already be saint. Perhaps you are reading the wrong blog.)
If respect has been lost, we have to accept that the friendship or relationship might not ever be quite the same. Once respect crumbles, it’s tough to rebuild, but our God is a miracle-worker after all.
Ultimately, we have to try to be at peace with others in the midst of the mess. St. Paul articulates this perfectly in Romans 12:18: “If possible, on your part, live at peace with all.”
Notice, too, what he says in earlier verses in that same chapter about blessing those who persecute us and anticipating one another in showing honor.
Let us learn to see each other as God does: with love and understanding, forgiving as we ourselves have been forgiven.
