Traces of Grace When Love is Hard

Her hands wrap around the cup of still-too-warm coffee. She leans forward, eyes moist. Pain offered in exchange for secrets – and hope.

“What have you learned?”

The question is not theoretical. Her daughter, like my son Caleb, battles drug addiction. She hangs over a cliff of despair. Hope frays. She has tried everything she can imagine. She has moved cities, abandoned a career and a marriage to be more “available” to her daughter. Nail marks may not dent the palms, but her soul carries scars.

Tough love only caused pain, provoking anger rather than change. Shifting to “whatever you need, we are here for you” brought similar results. Safety at home didn’t change outcomes.

Even as she sips the cooling coffee and claims she isn’t seeking a magic answer, she is.

She seeks a companion on the lonely, soul-piercing journey. Connection helps.

What have you learned from trying to help your son these past twenty years?

I was twenty-nine when I thought I knew the most about major questions of life. Since then, certainty has faded. Questions have replaced what I once knew absolutely for sure.

I say quietly, “I do not have the answers for your daughter. After all these years, I have abandoned the quest to think that I can fix my son or slay his addictions. Whether he can do this by himself or with the help of an angel, I do not know, but I do know that I am not his redeemer.”

She nods, hope dissolving like sugar in her coffee.

I continue.

“The most important thing for me now is this question: What is the best way for me to love him now?”

The question sounds simple. In practice, it is anything but, because sometimes love is not simple or obvious. Wrestling with the question pushes me far beyond good intentions, sentimentality or self-justification. Discernment can be exhausting, if only because of the honesty required. What belongs to me and what does not? What is within my power and what is not?

I have given up the search for the perfect answer. I live now in the pilgrim realm of seeking the best way, the next step, given my energy and circumstances. When Caleb was in prison, I took the phone calls, wrote letters and put some money in his canteen account. When on the street, we would meet at Tim Hortons to catch up and give me a chance to say “I love you.”

The most truthful answer to the question of love’s best way is seldom the one he wants to hear. ‘Dad, can you help me out with a twenty?’ It is not cheap; there is no easy forgiveness for when he steals from us. It is not pretending that he is in anything other than a life and death battle with powers beyond simple will-power. Love sometimes means disappointment. Control, possession, guilt, or performance lie abandoned by the roadside.

What is the best way for me to love them now?

The question has traction and is scalable for marriage, friendship, parenting and aging.

When my mother developed cancer, and my father slipped into dementia, when we had to assume greater care of my brother, with his acute OCD and behaviour “on the spectrum,” the focus of the question shifted, but the question remained the same.

The question challenges and guides through dementia, Alzheimer’s, arthritis, hip and knee replacements, heart issues, menopause, financial setbacks, divorce – the list goes on. Although it’s not a vending machine that spits out guaranteed answers, the question strips away slogans and nostalgia, helping me focus. When I may drift into fits of self-pity, anger or despair, the question functions like a rope across a swirling river, compelling me to stay present and not get pulled under by the currents of old grievances or history.

Photo by Aditya Wardhana on Unsplash

Familiar questions are neither productive nor loving.

“What do I feel like doing?”

“What’s easiest?”

“What keeps things comfortable?”

Practice patience and endurance. This truly is hard, exhausting to stay present amid repeated heartbreak and uncertainty, worn thin by hope and worry. Staying present and honouring the relationship requires patience, endurance and self-compassion. How hard can it be?

Who is this person truly, and what serves their good now?

“Now” becomes a keyword. The expressions of love toward my wife, my children and my grandchildren require awareness of the present. Memories seasoned with nostalgia or fantasies of “if only” blur the focus. Love now, for my wife, requires more than gifts of jewellery, flowers, new shoes or sex on the dining room table. Loving the grandchildren now means recognizing they have grown beyond the “most beautiful babies in the world.” Their lives and challenges differ not only from my memory but also from my experience. And the same is true for our children and their love for us. We are no longer the parents of their childhood.

Jesus seemed particularly adept at attending to the circumstances before him. He could respond with healing, confrontation, withdrawal, weeping, questioning, forgiveness, and overturning tables.

The process of discerning love in the present is challenging; yet, I cannot shake the sense that something of the sacred resides in the call to love well. The invitation to look beyond my own answers, to wrestle with how to love, especially when the path is uncertain, feels like an act of trust and a call to share in the sacred work of compassion, presence, and persistent care. Traces of grace.

A blessing for the week

May you be given the grace
to love without possessing,
to remain without rescuing,
and to hope without demanding certainty.

When the road bends toward sorrow,
May your heart not harden.
When weariness settles in your bones,
May you find companions for the journey.

May you know the wisdom
to see what is yours to carry
and what must be placed
into the hands of God.

And when the way forward is unclear,
May love be enough for the next step,
like a small lantern in the rain,
guiding you home by faithful degrees.

May mercy keep watch over those you love,
and may traces of grace
meet you both along the road.

Note: This article was written by the author with research assistance from ChatGPT. All interpretations, personal reflections, and conclusions are the author’s own.

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