The first step in giving all to God is gratitude.
The young man went away sad because he had many possessions. Yet if he had been truly grateful for his possessions, he would, ironically, have been willing to give them away.
We don't give things away because we hold them cheap. We give them away precisely because they are precious to us. We give them away because they represent ourselves, placed at God's disposal.
There are things I hold dear, things like my selfishness, my pride, my anger. My illusions about how my relationships should be. God asks me to sacrifice these precious possessions - how strange to think that He would accept these sacrifices of unholy things. But He will, because they represent who I am. They signify my willingness to place myself at His disposal.
Yet He asks me to sacrifice these things because He wants to replace illusion with reality - the shifting whims of human perception with the "imperishable, undefiled, unfading" truth. My "self" is nothing without God. My pride is not based on truth, because in truth I accomplish all in and through God. My anger is blinding me to the reality of the goodness of the world around me. My illusions about my relationships - with husband, child, parents - are keeping me from experiencing and appreciating my relationships as they really are.
When we die to these things, truth comes alive. Gratitude stems from humility, and humility is nothing more than an acceptance of the truth about oneself in the face of God. And the fruit of gratitude is always self-gift.
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I think that this Lent it will be important for me to learn how to be grateful for my parents. I feel at times as though there is a brick wall preventing me from honestly perceiving the good they've done for me. I have a lot of anger towards them, not just about things they've done in the past, but also about their apparent blindness to what they've done, their refusal to acknowledge the hurtfulness of their behavior. I've been stewing about this for so long that it's hard for me to feel any gratitude for the love they've shown me, because that love has always seemed so conditional, so self-serving.
Even writing about this now makes me sad and angry and anxious and hurt. Their love and concern for me so often manifested itself in angry attempts to change me into what they thought I ought to be, so that I would do what they thought would make me happy. How do I forgive them for that?
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And so also: gratitude is caught up in forgiveness.
I am tired of being told by them that I need to forgive, to let go of the past, to move on. I need to do this, I need to do that - it feels again like I am being manipulated so that I can play the part they want me to play, instead of being allowed to be honest with them about myself and how I feel about them.
Forgiveness is about relationship. I am firmly convinced of that. It must work two ways; it is not something that can be fully achieved on one's own. Forgiveness must change both parties; it cannot be a demand only upon the one doing the forgiving. Otherwise it is a cheap forgiveness, a dishonest forgiveness, a forgiveness that is not transformative but only perpetuates an unjust status quo.
Forgiveness, death to self - these are all martyrdoms, but martyrdom is not victimhood. Victimhood allows the victors to stand triumphant and unopposed. Martyrdom always tends towards the end of injustice. Forgiveness is not an invitation to be a victim; it is, rather, empowerment over one's oppressors. It indicates that the oppressors have no power over the oppressed.
My inability to forgive my parents is only evidence that I am caught in their power still. I am trapped in the status quo of them wanting me to be what I am not and of me wanting them to be what they are not. This push and pull is destroying us.
Forgiveness means stepping out of this push and pull struggle for the upper hand in the relationship. It means letting go of power.
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I offer to God today my relationship with my parents. I ask Him to help me forgive them and to teach me to be grateful to them. At the very least I am grateful that they raised me to have faith in Him. I ask Him to help me be honest with myself about my part in our troubled relationship. I ask Him to help me love them as He loves them, for they too are His children. I ask Him to help me sort through my responses to them, so that I can respond to them in a way that is true to myself without coming from a place of vengeance against them. I ask Him to take me out of their power and to hold me in His.
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