Family Feuds

  Over the last few months, three friends have told me about their family dramas where someone hasn’t talked to someone in decades. While they repeat the story to me with either sorrow or defiance, their sense of loss always bulldozes through, despite their best efforts to suppress it. 
 
 Anna’s father ignored her after he remarried several decades ago. She always held out hope that one day they’d be close again, despite his repeated absences at her graduations as she earned one advanced degree after another. No acknowledgement, no phone call, not even a check – yet my friend continued to invite him, hoping her father would celebrate her milestones with her.
 
 Fast forward 20 or 30 years – her stepmother dies, and soon after, her father comes knocking on her door wanting to reconnect with his baby girl. She took him back with open arms. I couldn’t believe it. Or at least I couldn’t imagine being so forgiving. But as she explained to me (and to countless others, no doubt), she loved her father and wanted him in her life, and she was willing to forgive his decades of neglect to have a daddy again. No questions, no apologies demanded.
 
 This past July she married. I watched Anna and her father dance and laugh together to Steven Curtis Chapman’s “Cinderella” at her reception. I don’t know how many guests knew how many steps those two had to travel for him to escort her 25 feet down the chapel aisle to give her away, but none of us who knew the story were dry-eyed.
 
 Then there’s Belle, my other girlfriend, whose story is almost identical. She’s realizing for the first time, now that her mother and stepmother are gone, that the stepsisters who hated her (at least that’s what she was told) can’t wait to meet her after all these years. In fact, they’re all planning a girlfriend getaway weekend. 
 
 Just last week she sent me a picture of her and her dad. She was beaming like a tween at a Hannah Montana concert. Her dad just looked grateful, with that peaceful tranquility of an old man who’s finally reconnected with his only child.
 
 The jury’s still out on the last story. I don’t know how it will end. Right now years of heartbreak have turned into a self-protective bitterness. I hope there’s a thaw in the ice one day soon. Someone is getting very, very old.
 
 Sometimes giving back means forgiving back. It’s not always easy but my two friends have a deep, new-found joy. I hope the third family is as lucky. And I hope each one of you finds that joy if it’s missing in your life. But you may have to take the first step.
 
 Get out and (for)give back.