You have been carrying a heavy bundle, I think, for a very long time. Some of the cords that bind it were tied in your childhood, when the heart was soft and every hurt went deep. Anger has wrapped itself around those old wounds, and unforgiveness has hardened like a knot you cannot undo. And then there is the tangled cord that binds your mother to all the rest, love and pain twisted together. You long to put the whole bundle down, to release it into hands stronger and kinder than your own. That longing itself is a prayer, and I believe the Lord has heard it already.
Do not imagine that your sin of unforgiveness puts you beyond the reach of mercy. The Lord does not sit aloft with a book, waiting to condemn. He says, “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake.” Picture a hand passing over the record, smoothing the page until no trace remains. The anger you have nursed, the bitter root you have felt in your own heart, He is able to put it all away, and He does it gladly for His own name’s sake. You do not come as one who deserves pardon; none of us do. But you come as one who may freely have it, because the Lamb of God has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, and with His stripes we are healed. Even the unforgiving heart, when it cries out, is heard.
And if He so willingly blots out your sins, will He not also gently untie the bundle you have brought? Sometimes we think releasing a wrong means saying it did not matter. Not so. It matters greatly, it mattered so greatly that Christ died for it. Forgiveness is taking your hand off the other person’s throat and putting their case into the hands of the Judge of all the earth, who does right. You need not pretend the wounds never bled. You simply hand the whole affair over to Him, saying, “Lord, this is too heavy for me. I give it to Thee.”
You asked for simple daily prayers. Let me offer you a very little one, a seed that may grow. When you first open your eyes in the morning, before the old resentments have time to stir, speak these words, or words like them, from your heart: “Lord Jesus, I bring Thee my childhood, with all its hurt and all its shaping of me, and I give it to Thee. I bring Thee my anger; I cannot untangle it, but Thou canst. I bring Thee my mother, just as she is, just as she was, and I let her go into Thy hands. And I bring Thee myself, a poor sinner needing mercy. Blot out my transgressions for Thine own sake, and make me willing to be made willing to forgive. Quicken me, O Lord, for I am prone to cling to these old things; make my spirit lively toward Thee, and let me feel the liberty of the children of God.” That is prayer enough for the day. You may breathe it again when the heat rises. It is not the length of the prayer but the lifting of the heart that matters.
I want you to notice something: Job’s captivity was turned when he prayed for his friends. You have been thinking perhaps that you must first feel perfectly forgiving and then pray for your mother. But our Lord often works the other way round. The act of praying for another person loosens the grip of bitterness in your own soul. It is like a window thrown open in a stuffy room, fresh air blows in where before there was only staleness. So do not wait to feel loving. Pray as you can, not as you cannot. “Lord, have mercy on my mother. Bless her, and do her good.” That simple petition, wrung from a struggling heart, is a sweet savour to God, and in the offering of it you will find your own chains growing strangely slack.
A child frightened in the dark does not need to understand the father’s business; it is enough to slip a small hand into a large one and walk on. You are in the dark about much that happened, much that still aches. Slip your hand into the hand of Christ. He knows the way through. He has borne darker things than these, and even when He cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” He did not let go His hold. He will not let go of you.
And so I leave you in His keeping.
May the Lord Jesus Himself, who carried our sorrows and blotted out the handwriting that was against us, take this burden from your shoulders and give you the sweet peace of a forgiven and forgiving child. May His Spirit breathe upon the embers of your soul until the flame of love burns bright again, and may you know the joy of a captivity turned, even as Job’s was, through prayer. Amen.