Scribed In Light

The Wound That Wouldn’t Heal

I spent decades believing I needed something. An answer. A reckoning. A moment of truth that would finally make it right.

I wanted to know why.

• why did you let him hurt us?
• Why did you turn away?
• Why didn’t you fight for me, for my sisters, when we were too small to fight for ourselves?

For years I carried these questions like chains.

Every time I thought of my childhood, those chains tightened around me. I could feel them—a constriction, a weight, a silent force clenching around my heart. They grew tighter with every moment I witnessed a mother nurturing her child, every gentle touch I never knew.

My heart—starved for the affections every child rightfully deserves, shrank beneath the weight of longing.

The wounds ran deep—not just from what was done, but from what was absent.

I spent my life trying to outrun the past, only to find its shadow waiting in the places I least expected—wrapped in the softness of a love that had never been mine.

But something changed.

I came to see that forgiveness was no longer needed. Not because I excused what had happened. Not because I received the justice or answers I once believed. But because I grew beyond the need for it.

I no longer needed an apology to heal. I no longer needed to carry the weight of what should have been. Forgiveness became irrelevant, not because they deserved it but because I deserved the peace.

I often rested upon the thoughts that perhaps my mother did her best. But, did she? Because best would have meant taking the blows instead of letting them fall on us. Best would have meant not pretending it wasn’t happening, and forcing us to cuddle in docile submission after the traumas. Nor forcing us to hide what our family image truly was when navigating in the outside world—on the other side of that veil. Best would have meant loving us more than she feared losing him. Best would have been rising above the fear and challenges of raising 3 children on her own. Not that I wanted any of this for her. Only within the pondering, of best.

And somewhere within my mid-adulthood I was certain of one thing—I was owed an apology.

I thought the day she finally acknowledged it, admitted it, would be the day I could breathe again. But when that day finally came—decades later—it didn’t feel like justice. It felt like desecration.

The Moment Grace Changed Everything

She was on her knees.

Not in defiance.

Not in arrogance.

But in ruin.

The woman I had spent my entire life blaming was sobbing at my feet, breaking before me in a way I never expected to see.

And I was horrified.

I had spent so many years believing I deserved this. That I deserved to hear her say she was wrong. That I deserved to watch her crumble under the weight of what she had done.

But when it happened?

I wanted nothing more than to undo it. She wasn’t kneeling because I was worthy of repentance. She was kneeling because she had believed herself unworthy of love.

And suddenly, I couldn’t bear it.

This wasn’t justice. This wasn’t healing. This was shame— a suffocating weight, drowning a woman who had already lost too much.

And I—who carried rage like armor—couldn’t let her stay there.

I dropped to my knees beside her, gathered her in my arms like she was a child, and nurtured and comforted her beyond her pain. Not because she had earned it. Not because I had forgotten. But because something within me knew—this moment was never about what she had done. It was about what I had become.

Somehow, in the rising, in the overcoming, in the breaking free of the weight of it all—I had grown.

Stronger.

Wiser.

More capable.

I had been shaped by the very pain that should have crushed me, molded into something greater than my own suffering.

And so, in that moment —where vengeance could have been mine, where justice could have demanded its due—

I found mercy instead.

I heard my own voice say it before I even understood the depth of the truth:

“You don’t need my forgiveness—you never did.”

And THIS—this is when it hit me. The full truth of God’s grace.

This is what Jesus feels when we each hit our knees begging the forgiveness which he has already given. When we believe our sins are too great, our mistakes too deep, our failures too unforgivable. When we cry out, broken and ashamed, He lifts us out of own storm, saying, “You were never meant to stay there.”

The Truth That Set Me Free

Forgiveness didn’t come the way I thought it would. It wasn’t a grand moment of justice. It wasn’t the apology I had spent a lifetime waiting for.

It was grace.

Grace that said:

• I see you. I see your wounds, your failures, your regrets.
• And I will not hold them against you.
• You are more than what you have done. You are more than what has been done to you.

I have strived to never let anyone apologize to me since. Because I am not worthy to kneel before. I am not someone who must be begged for forgiveness. I am just a soul who has been covered by grace.

And that grace—it is enough for all of us.

For me.

For them.

For all of us.

The Truth About What We Think We Need

How often do we chase the things we are certain we need?

• The closure we believe will heal us.
• The apology we think will set us free.
• The reckoning we are sure will bring justice to our wounds.

But when we finally hold them in our hands, we realize—they were never the thing that defined us.

We have already outgrown the version of ourselves that once needed them.

Because by the time the answer comes, By the time the apology is spoken, By the time the moment arrives that we were so sure would make us whole—

we find that we are already whole without it.

We are no longer the ones who were shattered. We are the ones who grew through the aches, rose from the wreckage, and emerged transformed into something greater than we ever were before the storm came.

If you are waiting for an apology, a reckoning, a moment of truth—I pray you come to see that you don’t need it.

Not because they are free from accountability. But because you are free from the past.

Let me leave you with these words of guidance from Martin Luther King Jr., “Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a constant attitude.”

John 8:32 You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Love, Light, and Hugs,

Tina