Questions & Answers

In this space Elizabeth Sherrill responds to readers' letters. (Your letters are read in strictest confidence, your name will not be used on the Web site and only your relevant comment or question will be quoted.)

A Daughter's Prayer

The letter excerpted here deals with a mother-daughter relationship. How fundamental are issues with our mothers! In this month's featured article I write about an attempt I once made to bridge the distance between my mother and me.

Kim faces a second intractable, tough-to-deal-with problem that most of us also encounter at some time or other: disagreement among Christians about interpretation of Scripture. Here is some of what she wrote:

Q: Dear Elizabeth,
I'd like you to pray for me for God to do a miracle. My mother is dying of cancer...[but] that isn't the healing I mean. I'm praying that before she dies Mother will agree to meet my husband... Because Mal was divorced she refused to come to our wedding and in 23 years she has never been to our house. She says the Bible forbids divorce and Mal is an adulterer...

I kept going to see her -- she lives only six miles away! I used to bring the children when they were younger but now they refuse to go... She's terribly lonely and I don't want to hurt her more than she's hurting herself.

...Our son Greg says reading the Bible makes people crazy like his grandmother. I read the Bible and to me it's all about loving. I just want Mother to be happy before she dies. Mal is a great guy and a wonderful father and I just know she would like him! I've prayed and I've pleaded but she doesn't change. Jesus said that with God all things are possible, so I keep hoping. I know you wrote in your book that God changed your heart, so please pray that He will change Mother's.

Thank you for reading this,
Kim

A: Dear Kim,

To me, the three hallmarks of the Christian shine from your letter -- faith, hope and charity! Faith in the steady way you've persisted in prayer without results you can see. Hope, in your refusal to accept your mother's alienation as final. And love as you continue in spite of 23 years of stonewalling, to want the best for her.

I do indeed know that God changes hearts. But, Kim, in my experience the heart he wants most to change is one's own. You've been a caring daughter long after many would have given up. But perhaps there's one more kind of care you can give her.

The Bible doesn't say we have to agree with our parents; it says, honor them. I wonder if what your mother needs most from you now, in her illness, is not argument, however compelling, or pleas to change, however beneficial a change would be to her. Perhaps she needs to know simply that you respect her. Could you tell her that you admire the integrity that's made her stick with her convictions at tremendous cost?

Maybe you can share with her the struggle you went through before reaching your decision to marry Mal. I'm sure you and he wrestled with this imperfect situation.

You and I see the forfeiting of precious relationships as violating Jesus's central commandment: Love one another. Your mother is hanging onto another of his words: Every one who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery. And hanging on, Kim, is perhaps very literally what she's doing.

The folks I know who find some clear, true, uncomplicated moral principle and build a wall rather than a bridge with it, are people for whom the complexity of the world is terribly threatening. Finding a steady place to stand allows them to cope. To take this security away is to do them damage.

None of us can know our mother's whole story, what her early life was like, what accommodations she's had to make for survival. Maybe what our mothers, in their final years, need from us is simply... acceptance. Acceptance of her personhood even with its negatives. Understanding if we can achieve it, admiration where we can, gratitude for what they are if we can set our fantasy mothers aside. But failing any of this, unreserved acceptance of a flawed and needy person like ourselves.

Indeed I will pray, Kim, for that miracle to happen, in you. And in your mother, and your children too. I'm often reminded how much more God can do than I "ask or think"! Prayerfully,