Recently my step-dad, Paul, died. He leaves a big hole in the lives of all of us who were his family and his friends. He married my mom when I was 3 years old and they divorced after I left home for college. It must not have been easy rearing 6 children on one coast and trying to maintain a relationship with two children living on the opposite coast. He did the best he could. What I will remember about him the most is how he cheered me on in my various endeavors. I always knew he was proud of me and I always knew I could count on his support. He did things that drove me crazy (he was not an on time person and I am an on time person!) but I will always be grateful to him for his love and support.
When our family got together to celebrate his life we recounted stories from our childhood and had many good laughs. In the midst of the storytelling, however, I was struck by how differently we remember some of the same stories. We each had our different relationships with Paul and we each have our different memories. Isn’t it odd how the same children in the same family can have vastly different experiences or at least memories of those experiences?
What I wonder about is how and when we begin writing our “scripts” for life. Do we begin writing our scripts at such an early age that we then find information to support the script? Or, do we write our script based on what we experience from very early or is it a combination of the two? What happens if our script is not particularly based in reality and is not serving us well as adults? Is it possible to rewrite our scripts?
As a person who believes in the transforming love of God and those around who have that of God in them, I have to say emphatically that I think we can absolutely rewrite and rework our scripts. The challenging part is how we become motivated to do so and the even more challenging part is how we encourage someone else to rewrite their script.
My mother had a script that did not serve her well and I remember trying in a variety of ways to convince her that what she thought was reality was not reality at all. In all of my codependent effort, I was not successful in encouraging her to rewrite her script. She was an alcoholic and she died much younger than she might have if she had been able to live a different script.
Some of my siblings have scripts that are not serving them well. I would do anything to help them be able to look differently at what they are now convinced was reality. The information I have is different than the information they have and I keep wondering why they insist on hanging on to what must be a very painful rendering of reality. Do some of us choose to live in pain for a reason? Wouldn’t you try to heal your pain if it were physical pain? Why don’t people work harder to heal emotional pain?
We have one life and it goes by fairly quickly. God has given us resources beyond what we even need in order to live abundantly. When we don’t avail ourselves of those resources and when we continue to live in pain without actively engaging in our own healing, I imagine God must feel frustration like I felt when trying to get my mom to live fully. Obviously, I am anthropomorphizing but I do so for a reason. God extends to us lifeline after lifeline and when we continue to refuse them we are choosing to live in pain. Why would anyone choose pain over healing?