forgive

Look What You Made Me Do

| Marie Griffith

Like millions of others, my daughters anticipated the new song by Taylor Swift and they weren’t disappointed. While most critics have bashed Look What You Made Me Do, millions of fans have helped Swift break streaming, download, and video view records and it’s predicted the song will hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart next month.

I like the song. Maybe it’s easy for me to like it because my girls literally grew up with Taylor Swift. Every single one of her songs has been played over and over and over in our house, on the computer, in the car, or on their phones. Wherever they could be played, TS songs were played. So in a way, I grew up as a mom with Taylor Swift. From Teardrops on My Guitar to Look What You Made Me Do is a lot of growing.

As I listen to Look What You Made Me Do, I’m reminded of a time as a young woman when I had the same attitude as the one played out in the song. After some heartbreaks I vowed I would never be hurt again. I didn’t trust others and kept everyone at arm’s length. I was strong and independent and ready to take on the world.

Like Taylor, “I got smarter, I got harder in the nick of time.” Only my heart became harder and harder because with every hurt a wall was built around my heart. Another hurt, another wall. Walls of sarcasm and suspicion. Walls of bitterness, pride and stony ambition.

But the thing about walls around our hearts is they don’t work. Not if we want love and joy and peace. Walls keep these away.

So what do I tell my young daughter when she’s betrayed by a friend? Or when someone calls her a name? What do I do when I’m lied to? Or ignored? Or uninvited?

I can tell my daughter to treat those who mistreated her the same way. I can tell her to ignore them and never talk to them again. I can snub those who ignore me and unfriend those who no longer welcome me.

But there is a better way. I’ll be kind to them. I’ll smile and speak when I see them. And I’ll forgive them. I’ll tell my daughters to do the same. Forgiveness may be a process and one I have to work hard at but it’s the only way to do it if I want to love and live well.

And I will tell my daughters to fight to keep their hearts soft. “Become wiser. Don’t give in to what you want to do at first. Don’t let this song or all the others like it become the anthem of your lives. Don’t give in to how the world says to treat those who hurt you. Instead, be kind and brave . And forgive them.”

 Above all else, guard your heart,
    for everything you do flows from it.     Proverbs 4:23 NIV

While lessons learned should make us wiser, they shouldn’t make us harder. Hearts are meant to be soft and without walls. That’s the only way we learn to love. That’s how we give it and get it. That’s how we learn to trust. That’s how we learn to forgive and become compassionate and kind.

Maybe smarter in the nick of time. But not harder.

Photo by Gabriele Diwald on Unsplash

Keeping the Promises

| Marie Griffith

Laughter floated in the air as food was prepared and decorations set. Flowers filled the entry ways, overflowed from vases on the mantel, tables and all around our home. Friends and family gathered yesterday to shower my daughter with blessings as she prepares to enter this new season of life and celebrate the upcoming marriage to her fiance. What a joyous time it was. We saw faces we hadn’t seen in years. Some came from far away, others from down the road. My sweet aunt who was married to her love for 74 years was there. Some newly marrieds and some who will be someday came too.

Along with lots of wonderful gifts for her home, our friends and family brought their love and blessings with them. My friend told us a beautiful story and shared some things she wish she’d known as a young bride. Then I prayed for my daughter.

It didn’t take long for me to settle on what to pray for her in her marriage. Her father and I celebrated 23 years of marriage the day before her shower so I was thinking of our story as I was thinking about how to pray.

Twenty three years ago in a small wedding chapel in Tennessee we vowed to love each other.

We promised to love each other when times were good and when they weren’t. To love each other in times of sickness and wellness, during feast or famine, and highs and lows.

We laugh now at the kids we were then because we thought we had it figured out. Now we know we still don’t have it figured out.

But we’re learning. We’re growing together, loving each other, and getting better and better at it. We’re keeping the promises.

We’ve experienced abundant joy and faced tragedy; enjoyed many blessings and walked through painful seasons. And we’ve done it for 23 years.

We’re better because of each other and for each other.

I began the prayer for my daughter with Ephesians 4:32. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

It’s not the typical marriage verse but I know from 23 years that when my husband and I are practicing this, we’re doing well. When we’re not following it, things aren’t as good as they can be.

I prayed for her the same things I ask for myself:

“Father, thank You that we can come to You with confidence and know You hear us. Thank You for our friends and family gathered here to celebrate our daughter’s life. And thank You for the divine gift of marriage.

Father, You promise to give us all we need to do what You’ve called us to do. Draw her near to You. May she look to You for guidance and wisdom as she grows into the woman You’ve called her to be.

You call us to kind actions and words but Your desire is not that we just do kind acts but that our hearts are tender which leads to kindness. God, keep her heart tender. Let her eyes be fixed on You and may she remember Your kindness and extravagant love toward her.

Give her a wholehearted love for You, Father. Because as her love for You grows, so will the love for her husband.”

And we all said, “Amen.”

“Love is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit, reinforced by the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God.”   C.S. Lewis

photo by Markie Pearson Photography

Extravagant

With a Friend

| Marie Griffith

With a friend…..

You can be yourself, but if you’re not she notices.

You can share the deepest parts of you.

Sad or mad or glad. It’s all the same to her because she loves you no matter what.

She knows your story and you know hers.

With her, it’s okay to not be okay.

She listens because she cares.

She’ll let you be scared but help you be brave.

Your laugh makes her laugh. Her tears break your heart.

It always feels like yesterday even when it’s been a while.

She makes you better because she lifts you up.

It’s easy with her because she loves you just the way you are, whenever you are.

And you do the same.

My friends have walked with me through the happiest and darkest of days.

A friend taught me to listen because I watched her listen.

One of them taught me how to give a good hug. Another how to make the best homemade bread you’ve ever tasted.

One taught me how to lead and follow, one how to forgive again and again.

And some have given me the confidence to do what I thought I could never do.

That’s what friends do.

I’m better because I have the best kind of friends.

Friend

Quitting

| Marie Griffith

The sound of the doorbell startled me. When I opened the door the man asked for Wayne. Before I answered him, the man asked if I knew him. He had a familiar smile but his face was aged and different. And the voice……..the voice was familiar too. For the next few seconds my brain tried to match a name with the kind face and his recognizable voice.

Before I could make the match he told me who he was. I was glad to see him and especially happy that he came by to see Daddy.

Daddy would have been thrilled for the visit. The man was shocked and saddened to hear that Wayne, my dad, had passed away. After he gave his condolences, we caught up.

It was a strange mixture of emotions…….remembering what was, learning what is, and trying to summarize thirty years of life in thirty minutes or so.

Then he asked the most amazing question. “Did your dad ever stop drinking?”

Oh how I wish he’d have known the man that Dad had become. The gracious man that cared for Mom so tenderly while working his job from his home office. The man that overflowed with generosity…….with his time and resources. The man that forgave so easily because he knew he’d been forgiven so much.

Daddy stopped drinking in 1990 or so. Never took another drink.

He quit to save his life.

His quitting saved our lives.

And who knows what else his quitting did. Whatever it did, it was good and right.

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.          

                            1 Corinthians 15:10

Names

Someday

| Marie Griffith

Someday I’ll write that book.

I’ll travel when I have more money.image

Next year I’ll learn a new language.

I’ll go back to school when I have more time.

I’ll reconnect with my friend soon.

Monday I’ll start eating healthier and exercising.

Someday I’ll patch things up with my dad.

Tomorrow I’ll apologize to my brother.

Someday won’t just happen. You have to make it happen.

Stop making excuses. Stop waiting for more time or more money or better circumstances. Don’t wait until you’re not scared anymore.

Someday can be today. Step into the fear. Make the call. Book the trip. Enroll in that class. Skip the McDonald’s value meal and go for a walk instead.

Make today the someday you’ve talked about for years. Move toward what you’ve always wanted to do and see what happens.

You have nothing to lose!

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.    Ephesians 2:10 NIV

 

Enroll

Forgive

| Marie Griffith

My 10 year old daughter is now 13 and forgives as easily as she did then. It’s not lost homework anymore – I don’t have to check it as much as I used to (see original post). Now it’s a thoughtless comment or an impatient stare.

I’ve worked through some difficult trials and made the hard choice to forgive. I am choosing to forgive. It’s not only a choice: it’s a journey, too. Inconsiderate actions, angry words, betrayal, abuse……whatever the offense…….may we learn to forgive as easily as my daughter. May we all.

At that point Peter got up the nerve to ask, “Master, how many times do I forgive a brother or sister who hurts me? Seven?”
Jesus replied, “Seven! Hardly. Try seventy times seven.

Matthew 18:21-22 (MSG)

My 10-year-old daughter accused me of throwing her homework away, and that’s what she told her teacher, too.  I denied it.  “Why would I throw your homework away?” I asked. 

 She sighed, “I asked you to check it and you must have put it in the pile of papers you were looking through.”  I was looking through the accumulation of graded papers in her STAR notebook……….but I don’t remember her asking me to check her homework. 

 “You didn’t ask me to check your homework?”  I said. 

“Yes, I did, Mom.  But my teacher said that it was okay if I couldn’t find it”.

I wondered what her teacher thought of me now……another distracted mom who can’t keep up with her child’s homework. 

 After my daughter went to bed I checked in the garbage can.  I laughed to myself when I saw the math homework she had asked me to check. …

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51

| Marie Griffith

January 26, 1963 Wayne Griffin and Jan Sharrott were married in a small Methodist church in Huntsville, Alabama with only two of their closest friends watching. The next few years were difficult. They had two daughters and money was tight. Wayne worked for Willo Products in Decatur and opened the Neighborhood Shell Gas & Grocery in Hartselle.

They lived with Wayne’s mom. Their small bedroom was cramped with their bed and two baby beds. Without air conditioning, the room seemed smaller in the summertime. Winters were easier because the pot-bellied stove heated the house well. By 1972 they had four daughters and that same year they bought the place where Wayne and his brother grew up.

img_4964Fifty one years is an accomplishment in any marriage, but my sisters and I know just how remarkable this one is because we witnessed and lived through it. They endured the normal hardships that come with raising a family. Financial crises, job changes and losses, failed businesses, health problems, and four girls. With one bathroom!

The most difficult challenge had to be dad’s alcoholism. That made all the other struggles even harder. Thousands and thousands of tears fell. Mama cried because she felt alone and angry and worried. Daddy cried because he didn’t know how to beat the addiction that was hurting his family and ruining his life. We cried because we were scared when Mama and Daddy fought.

But there was plenty of laughter, too. Fish fries and family gatherings. Saturday morning yard work and Saturday evening grill-outs. Trips to the beach and Christmas. The best memories fill my heart.

I’ve wondered how they did it – how they were able to stay together when so much seemed against them. They can’t give me an easy answer.

After 20 plus years in my own marriage I’m still learning how to do marriage. It’s hard. I’ve wanted to leave. I’ve wanted him to leave. Recently. Last week.

My parents’ marriage has eternal significance, a lasting legacy. I have the courage to stay and fight for my own marriage because of their 51 years.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
Love never dies.                               1 Corinthians 13:4-8 (MSG)

They wanted to give up sometimes. They didn’t do their marriage perfectly.

They just did it. They endured…..they persevered. They forgave and they stayed. They hoped for better days. They kept going and they will go to the end.

In my marriage…..I will take it one day at a time. Committed. Dedicated. Keeping my vows. Choosing to love and stay. Trusting God, not looking back and looking for the best.

I’m forever grateful they kept the vows spoken in that small church in Huntsville in 1963.

Thank you Mama and Daddy. I love you.