CLEVELAND, Ohio – “I wish we could just have a normal relationship.”
Linda (not her real name) said this to me when talking about how her son suddenly has come back into her life. She was hit hard with an illness, spent a few weeks in the hospital.
The son would make contact perhaps a few times a year, nothing very deep.
“But since I got sick, he wants to come in and run everything,” she said.
He’s not even asking her what she wants him to do, he wants to “take over and tell me what to do.”
“Do you think he’s trying to make up for lost time?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” Linda asked.
“Maybe he knows that he should have been more involved in your life,” I said. “Now that you’re older and had this health scare, he feels guilty. Like he’s trying to make up for lost time.”
“That could be it,” she said. “But this isn’t the right way to do it. I feel like he’s bossing me around and making me a nervous wreck.”
I thought about that for a moment.
“The problem with trying to make up for lost time is you can’t,” I said. “It leads to overcompensating, trying to do now – all at once – what should have been done for years.”
That’s when Linda mentioned her heart aching for a “normal relationship.”
WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?
If you want to “make up” for time lost and mistakes made, remember you don’t make the rules.
That’s the problem with her son’s approach. He wants to return to his mother’s life by “fixing her.” And he wants to do it his way.
It’s a temptation.
We say things like, “OK, how about I write a check for...”
Or “how about I buy you....”
Or as Linda discovered, her son thought the best thing was for him to rearrange her life.
“I just wish he’d ask me what I want him to do,” she said.
Yes, asking would be good.
But even better would be starting with an apology.
How do you make up for “lost time”? You begin by admitting time was lost – and it was your fault.
That’s not easy. It’s going to take prayer. It will require what the Bible calls a humble and contrite heart (Psalm 51:17).
Or Ephesians 4:2: “With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love.”
WHO DEFINES THE RELATIONSHIP?
The person who has been hurt will require us to approach them with “humility, patience and gentleness.”
If we are primarily responsible for the fracture in the relationship, we should first apologize. Then we need to ask, “How do you want to go from here? What kind of relationship would you like?”
While Linda’s situation is with a son, it often is the other way. Parents divorce. Or they leave. And suddenly they want to return to the lives of their children.
The people left behind have been hurt. It would be natural for them to be suspicious. Trust was broken.
WHAT COMES NEXT?
In some cases, it makes to sense not to allow a dangerous person back into your life. Many people confuse “forgiveness” with “reconciliation.”
Pastor Rick Warren (author of “The Purpose Driven Life”) defines forgiveness as giving up the “right to get even.” It means not obsessing on the hurts or letting them rule your emotional life.
The next step is restoring the relationship. OK, what will the relationship be – if there will even be one – going forward? The person who was hurt and left behind has the right to set up the boundaries.
That often means going slowly. It also means stop blaming and rehashing the old history that tends to only lead everyone in a circle of frustration.
Remember, lost time is lost. We can’t “make up” for it. But we can start to do things the right way, do them slowly and most of all, do them with a humble heart.
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January 29, 2022 at 05:04PM
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How to ‘make up’ for lost time in an important relationship – Terry Pluto’s Faith & You - cleveland.com
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