I Don't Need to Understand

I’m not sure if I have shared this or not, but I am a person who desperately wants to understand. I have been like this for as long as I can remember. I’ve always wanted to know the why behind the what. However, I have come to realize through faith and therapy there are moments, people, and behaviors that I will never be able to understand no matter how hard I try. In those instances, it is a matter of trusting the Lord, over what I can understand, and letting God’s Spirit fill me with a peace that surpasses my understanding, to guard my heart and mind. I don’t think it was a coincidence that my life verse is Proverbs 3:5-6

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart

    and lean not on your own understanding;

6 in all your ways submit to him,

    and he will make your paths straight.”

I can trust that God’s will, love, and plan for my life is far bigger than what I don’t understand. I share all of this because I have been struggling with my lack of understanding around the way I was raised since having our daughter. Before having Allie, I had gotten to a place of peace with my parents. I know my parents love me and they did what they thought was best in raising me, even though that left pain. My parents are human, and like the rest of us, that means they are far from perfect and have their own hurts and hang-ups they are dealing with. And though our relationship is far from healthy, I have found ways to still find joy in those relationships.

However, all of the healing I had done before having our daughter seemed to crumble once we brought Allie home. I wrestled with trying to wrap my head around my childhood and what I went through, through the lens of being a mom. 

Before becoming a mom, I did not know the level of love that I would feel for my daughter until seeing her for the first time. Never in my life have I been so willing to die for someone so quickly. I would give my last breath for Allie, in a heart beat if it meant keeping her safe. So I just couldn’t understand how a parent could love their child so deeply and yet cause them so much pain. This led me to a whole slew of questions…

• Do my parents not love me the same way that I love Allie?
• If they did love me the same way, did the love fade away in time?
• Will my love for Allie fade away in time?
• Was their love for me not enough?
• Did everything they do stem from that love, truly believing that what they did was the best thing for me?

All of which led to more questions without answers and me coming back to scripture that says we are called to honor our parents. Despite the pain and questions that were racing through my mind, at the end of the day, I am held accountable to Christ for the choices that I make. Though I may never be able to wrap my mind or heart around some of the choices made in parenting me, I have to rest in the revelations I have been given and lay the rest at God’s feet. I know my parents love me and that they did their best in raising me. No parent is perfect, including myself. I am not my parents, though traits from both of them are apart of me, I am my own person and I can allow the bitterness of unforgiveness to destroy me from the inside out or I can lay the pain down at Christ’s feet as many times as needed in my life to choose forgiveness. I can choose to pick up wisdom from the pain and not take the same approach in raising our daughter. I hope and pray that I won’t leave Allie with the same hurts that I have, though I am sure there will be some heartache caused in our parenting, don’t think anyone gets to escape that. I do pray that any heartache she may have from either of us in how we choose to parent her, that she will see our heart and that our intention never was to cause her pain. That she will always know how much she is loved, wanted, and that we did what we did to keep her safe.