There’s a song by Mike and the Mechanics called The Living Years

It talks about parental damage and wasted time. I know this first hand and even though Dad’s been gone since 1987 I still can have something rattle my insides about the past.I have forgiven my parents but sometimes the lesson you learned in the journey comes forward to teach you now. I was involved in a storm this week that I created for myself but it brought up things I thought were long faded from my memory. One thing I learned from the wreckage of having a distant dad who didn’t really know how to love was that you have to say what needs to be said and do it in the right way. I could have asked him hundreds of times why we couldn’t get to a healthy daughter/father relationship and why we had to talk in defense. I could have said why did my brother die and tried to understand his hurt and pain instead of clinging to my fear of being the next to die. We do sacrifice the future when our pain carries us around and we don’t give up or give in. Being always right is a huge burden. I am thankful GOD taught me that I am frail, fallible and still fantastic in His loving care. It’s very tempting to hold on with right on our side but how does someone find their way home to us if we value our being right more than doing what is right? Sometimes I have been right in this journey and times I have been wrong are probably more numerous. Still if I win everyone loses. In relationships the goal has to be for everyone to win and for us to realize where a person fails in our eyes we can get angry and also show mercy. I can’t avoid saying what I need to say but I am still learning and navigating in unchartered waters in some areas and have a lot to learn. I learned that people make mistakes and deserve a second, third even 100th chance. I can’t stay stuck in the places that are hard even when I cause the hardness because they will become my trophy to pain and eventually a monument. Even The Living Years are hurtful there is still a lot of life out there and whole healthy love and we have to move forward to the mark and keep going. Look around you and find others who need your love and grace and walk with them forward toward Jesus as well. Everyone who crosses your path was there to either to teach you or you teach them. All of it is God’s divine plan. Follow after love with pure motives and a sincere heart and trust GOD not yourself. Lesson learned. One day I will know how to love perfectly because the glass will be removed but the best I can do here is to love as whole and healthy as I can. Sometimes that doesn’t look like love and it’s sad when it doesn’t because my heart is always to love. This was prompted because a man in my church was gored today by a bull that caught him against a fence in the roof of his mouth and literally took his face off. When I think of that and how the whole family is wondering what tomorrow brings I have to realize we all have to live in the living years because we don’t know. Love deep, forgive huge and follow after the one that loves perfectly.

The Way of Love

1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,[a] but have not love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;[b] 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.