In my book “Belonging” I write about a tapestry of the threads of forgiveness and how that made meaning of my life. In fact, the title of the book could have been “Letters of Forgiveness”.

The night my mother passed away, following her courageous long battle with cancer, something passed between my soul and hers. It was divine grace. A whisper from God in the stillness of the night, her sometimes ragged breath, the only sound to puncture the dark night sky outside.

But you see at that time I was so full of my own torment of “not being good enough” that it got in the way of me reaching her, I couldn’t truly love her as I wanted to back then because I despised myself so much.

I had slipped into the demons of constant achievement – looking for validation, for approval, in my desperate search for affirmation. And in the dark stillness of the night, she forgave me for being the complex child, the apparent rebel, the one that caused despair and concern. The outsider.

Following that fateful night was to become a time of great forgiveness.

God was in the room that night.

But it was only later, after the scorching of my soul in the balm of forgiveness, that I would finally forgive myself.

I finally forgave myself for the looping patterns of “never being good enough” and the havoc it caused in the constant chatter of my mind.

The self-derision and self-judgement suffocated my mind. It clogged the arteries of my soul; it dulled my senses. I lived in constant fear of what people thought of me. I tried so hard, but I was so self-absorbed I was trying to do everything perfectly.

Now I live in grace. The grace of forgiveness. Some days it’s hard. When you really feel you “messed up” and you have to absorb and embrace the wisdom of this learning and forgive yourself for the anguish you caused yourself and others.

God was (on the floor with that night.