When my father was in the grip of his anger, only his tears expressed his pain. That morning, when I realized that my hatred had hurt him, I wrote an apology. “Please forgive me for those years of hatred. God doesn’t give me the prerogative to hate, no matter what.”
A week later, on the back of the yellow lined sheet on which I’d written my apology, he wrote: “How hard it is to be humble, but ‘I forgive.’”
I thought: how did this get to be about how hard forgiveness is for him? But I was done trying to make him see my point of view. All I knew was that he forgave my hatred; I had forgiven his abuse.
Jesus died for my sin. Jesus died for my father’s sin. We will both give an account, under the grace and mercy of the cross, in the last act of this long story God is telling. Pg. 22