The Power of Love: What 62 Years Have Taught Me About Family, Forgiveness and God
This morning I had a conversation with my daughter while she was driving. It was one of those conversations that stayed with me for the next five hours. Not because of anything extraordinary that was said, but because I could see just how far we have come in our relationship together.
Kirstyn has had a mother wound with me as I had with my mother. This is part of our passage through life and our soul’s journey. Our wound may not always appear as a mother woumd and can often be a father wound. The truth of it all, we all have one and some are better at denying the wound than others.
I was sharing with her how I am reading for the second time a book called Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch. Normally I have a sense she has no interest in me but today she stayed in our conversation.
"Yes we all go through this, try to remember not to take it so personally."
Kirstyn then told me how her partner has introduced her to opening up the Bible to the Book of Proverbs. She chooses a random page and it always matches the message she was meant to receive that day.
We were having a conversation that spoke to the truth of who I am. Not a lot of people are comfortable in these conversations and today I was experiencing soul wisdom with my daughter.
Fast forward 5 hours later and I wanted to see what she sees when she opens up to the Book of Proverbs. Out fell an old newspaper article I have been carrying around in my Aunt Joan’s Biblei and it was dated April 17th, 1980. I have included the link here if you wish to see an old article written from the love of a family that proved unconditional love over and over again, even in all the chaos. This is from the Toronto Star written by what many labeled the big mouth of the family my Aunt Pat. It turns out similar to me.
Perhaps this is where I should share a little more about my relationship with God.
My entire life I have had this relationship with God and not many have been witness to it. Sure they see the girl who does the sign of the cross every time she passes a cemetery or for a deceased animal on the road. The rest of the time I can’t be bothered defending myself to naysayers. The past 2.5 years he has become my best friend in this move of mine. I have been praying to God since I was a teenager and these days I have full all out conversation with him from my front deck looking out over the horizon.
I am creating a new life for myself and my work is changing. I have invited in God to share in this adventure of mine and the signs I am receiving are out of this world. Signs like opening up a book to a paragraph that was obviously meant for me, and within seconds a centipede walking up to me as if it was on the same mission. To lights flickering, or lamps turning on when I am on the other side of the room. I am sharing all of this because for some reason I am being asked to also share who I am in a bigger way.
I am still the girl who was a teenage cheerleader, a rollerskating rebel, and the one who just 3 years ago got up on a bar just to wiggle my ass and wave my arms in the air. I still like a shot of tequila once a year on my birthday, I still aim to do a backflip off a diving board if I find myself by a pool. I haven’t changed and yet I wonder if others believe I have changed. No, I just started hiding parts of myself so I am accepted in the same rooms I once visited. I have had to defend myself over many years because I have a lot of moving parts of my personality that isn’t always understood. I have a wild side and I have a God loving side. I have a loud personality and I have a soft quiet personality. Two truths get to coexist.
The biggest part most see but don’t always recognize is this. I have a heart that loves deeply and can’t seem to understand why this world hasn’t figured out the power of love.
Over the years as I was preparing to step into the work that holds my passion, I took some delayed detours. I even changed provinces in a way so I could bring out the truth of what I believe in and what I want to share in this world.
During a mastermind call 2 weeks ago I heard myself say it out loud. I was asked if I could say or do anything without the fear of judgement, what would it be? I answered, “I would give the world a shake and tell them to get their act together when it comes to love and family”
Jak asked, then why aren’t you? Then this article fell out of my Bible.
The article was written by my Aunt Pat about my Nanna and I was reminded what I have been wanting to share to the world, maybe even my own family, definitely my own family. This article spoke of the truth of family, and what we take for granted. It is what my Aunt Pat didn’t say, that I knew, because I lived it. There are stories there as well and each generation has been repeating them. This article served as the sign it was time to give the world a shake. Even if it is only to the world that I am experiencing.
We have been given the opportunity to come into this world and remember what our soul came here to do. The people that came in with us as our siblings, parents, children, other relatives, and friends are part of our journey.. There was no guarantee it would be easy and in fact it has been the hardest thing we have ever had to live through.
After 62 years, heartbreak and devastation I am still the woman with a heart that loves unconditionally. I am also the woman who has no relationship with two of my siblings, but I love them with all of me. As I look back they were partly the ones holding all of my childhood memories and helped introduce me to who I am today. Yes they also are the ones I learned to hide from because they didn’t feel safe for me to be who I am today.
We can still love and decide we don’t always have to stay as close as we once were. I don’t know why it has to be all or nothing. But it does too often than not..Why? Because somewhere in our life we started wanting to control how others showed up as. If they caused us friction we decided they didn’t belong in our life.
In truth, we all came into this world as completely different human beings. We came in with our own experiences we chose to evolve in. As family we come in with the same generational traumas to heal and this is what we choose to judge in each other.
We all have different strengths, weaknesses and different personalities. Yet we tear each other down and blame the other for not being who we want them to be. Why can’t we just accept we are different and also the same in ways? We are all moving through our own evolution and wanting to remember who we are. So why do we want the ones we once actively loved to be who they are not?
We don’t have to fit in each others life, but we should still be able to love each other. There gets to be two truths and yet we choose to decide which truth is the one that gets to be lived.
One day we will look back at all this and realize so much of it didn’t even matter. Unfortunately it could be when a goodbye is being asked of us.
I raised four children with two of them being step children. I am witnessing their experience similar to my own. Siblings torn apart and parents holding the mistakes weighed by the same measuring as my birth family. There are families being torn apart, children estranged from parents, siblings who no longer speak, and after 62 years of living, I have witnessed the long term effects of these separations.
I speak on this because for many years that was my story with my mother. I had good reason to not have her in my life and now that she is gone I now have good reason to wish I could go back, because the reasons just don’t matter anymore. I have witnessed my brother finding forgiveness for our father after 48 years. Our father died in 1978 and he has carried this anger all of this time. This year I got to see my brother invite love back into his heart for a man who had many flaws. But don’t we all have flaws? Yes some a lot more than others but in the end the freedom is in the power of love. Today my brother is a different man and I know it is because he chose to let love in, and to not carry the hatred or anger for someone who too had a lot to overcome.
You see we are all the same in some way. We all were made in the image of the Creator who created this world. We are all here to live out our own soul’s story in order to evolve. It is up to us to choose love, to choose freedom. I know what set me free and I am so grateful to see what has set my brother free. I spent a lifetime with my brother praying for this moment and this year I witnessed a miracle. I witnessed a man choose something different and his life truly changed.
This is my work and I have been trying to let it in for over 45 years. Today I say to you, “ God and Love has shown me who I really am.”
In my faith I know God doesn’t judge so why do we? God wants us to live our full soul’s purpose and it is through us he too experiences this life. Everything he has created in us is perfect as he can’t create anything less. Our invitation is to see what we can do when we choose the power that was created within us.
What might we create in our lives if we stopped choosing judgment and started choosing love?
BIG LOVE 🖤
Patrice Burns oX
Founder of Odyssey Lighthouse