Do You Need to Forgive Your Parents?

I don’t know if you still have any emotional issues, any resentment, any hurt feelings toward your father, your mother, or both. Many people can hold a grudge against their father and mother, against one of them or both, for many years. Letting them go will bring great relief to your emotional pain, whether they are still alive or have already passed away. Letting go of hurt, resentment, and hatred brings mental relief and inner peace, which also benefits your physical health.

Look at this beautiful quote:

The sphere of the mother may be humble; but her influence, united with the father’s, is as abiding as eternity. Next to God, the mother’s power for good is the strongest known on earth.¹⁾White, E.G. The Adventist Home, p. 240

It seems that the type of love that most closely resembles divine love is that of a mother. My mother died in 2011. I still long for her. I miss her very much. We learn to deal with the loss of a family member to death. But the longing remains, the nostalgia comes and goes, doesn’t it? What a strange thing death is, isn’t it?

It takes the person we love, and very quickly they are no longer there with us. They are taken from our lives. What remains is emptiness, loss, pain, sadness, longing. Death is the worst enemy of human beings, and the Bible says it is the last enemy to be overcome. Death will be conquered by life.

Enjoy the presence of your father and mother, if they are still alive. Be affectionate with them, help them with their afflictions and burdens, rather than placing more weight on your parents. If you have been a son or daughter who has caused your parents headaches, please stop. Stop your immaturity, stop your rebellion, stop your unwillingness to try to understand them.

Forgive the mistakes they have made. They may die before you and you will miss them, but you will have a clear conscience that you did your best for those who brought you into this world. At some point in life, we need to forgive our parents for their mistakes in our upbringing. How do you want to be forgiven for your mistakes if you don’t forgive other people’s mistakes, right? Even if you have suffered because of your mother or father’s emotional problems that affected you, forgiveness is still necessary.

Forgiveness is not for those who deserve it, but for those who need it. Forgive first in your heart. If it is difficult for you to feel like forgiving, then start by thinking about forgiving.

Start thinking about forgiving your parents. Even if you don’t feel love for your father or mother, for whatever reason, perhaps because you were abused by him or abandoned by her, it is possible to forgive them.

And forgiving is an act of love, even in the absence of feelings of love or loving. In fact, the fifth commandment of the Decalogue tells us to honor our father and mother. If you can’t love them, at least you can honor and respect them. Don’t hold grudges against them. Your mother and father did what they could in the past or do what they can in the present, what they know, what their emotional resources allowed them to do in the past and allow them to do today.

Think about it. Try to understand it. Yes, you may miss the loving side of your father or mother. In some cases, it can be difficult to deal with, right? We usually try to compensate for this lack with things in life, with hard work, affective relationships, excessive attachment to a person, among other things.

But the void will never be completely filled. We have to deal with it and accept it. Accepting the lack of affection, attention, and protection that parents should have given is not the same as agreeing with what they did. That’s not what I’m suggesting. Accepting it means looking at the unpleasant reality and acknowledging that it is the reality, but that you survived.

Some suffer not only from the absence and longing for the father or mother who died, but also from the lack of affection and patience from one or both of them that did not exist. It is a double pain, because there is the pain of death and the pain of the lack of affectionate care that they were unable to give their children. And it can hurt a lot, especially on special occasions, such as Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, their birthday, or Christmas, at other times that marked your relationship with your parents.

It will help you forgive your father or mother if and when you look at the way they treated or treat you and think about what their childhood was like with their parents, your grandparents. Did they suffer back then with their mother or father? Did your parents suffer with a stepfather or stepmother? Did their father or mother die when they were children? Did your father or mother suffer because of their parents’ separation?

Was their childhood easy? By forgiving your father and mother, you will free yourself. Look at them with compassion. They are human beings with struggles, character flaws, conflicts, anxieties, and sorrows, which may be difficult to face and live with. Compassion helps us see another person from a different perspective.

By being compassionate, we can see the painful side of the other person, instead of rejecting them, attacking them, and belittling them. By exercising compassion, we can get closer to them in our minds and, if possible, face-to-face with a new attitude, with a desire to help them. Yes. Some parents, I agree, some mothers were cruel to their children. Some abandoned their children, both physically and emotionally, due to, I don’t know, an idealized romance or some other reason.

Other parents were so immature that they were emotionally incapable of being fathers and mothers. Like so many young people today, who have children very early, prematurely, and are emotionally incapable of raising these babies, needing a mother themselves.

But even so, forgiveness is powerful. Forgiveness is something great, liberating. Perhaps forgiveness is the only attitude that can cause the interruption of aggressive and neurotic attitudes across generations.

We are forgiven by our benevolent Creator. So we can learn to forgive as well. At least part of your distress or anguish may disappear when you forgive those who have hurt you and may continue to hurt you, whether it be your father, your mother, or someone else. Remember Job? That man who suffered greatly in life?

I would like to conclude with this quote:

The Lord turned the captivity of Job when he prayed, not only for himself, but for those who were opposing him. When he felt earnestly desirous that the souls that had trespassed against him might be helped, he himself received help. Let us pray, not only for ourselves, but for those who have hurt us, and are continuing to hurt us.²⁾White E.G. SDABC vol.3 p.1141

What a beautiful text! May the Lord Jesus give you the grace to forgive your parents.