Parents don’t have to be living for adult children to live in captivity to a soul tie.  There’s nothing more painful than someone who has died and left the ones who remain with no closure.  Issues were never addressed.  Explanations were never made.  Affirmations were never given.  Apologies were never offered.  

My mother died when I was thirty years old.  She didn’t talk much about her early life and I had tons of questions I was too shy to ask.  Because her silence was rooted in trauma, her ability to speak life, and love, was measured.  Thankfully, her actions were nurturing but words were still coveted.  After she died, I lived many years wishing I’d had more time.  I thought of all the ways I could have broached subjects if she’d lived longer. I imagined intimate conversations we could have had where she would finally bond with me.  Attachment would have been satisfied.  My grief was unending and complicated. 

This ‘if only’ kind of ruminating pointed so clearly to a soul tie that needed to be broken.  Not only did I live in the ache of un-spoken words, I carried my mother’s pain, the very pain that caused her to withhold the words in the first place.  I had to lay both down at the feet of Jesus.  That took years. 

I wonder what happens in the heart of adult children as they visit parents’ graves.  If the tears could speak, oh, the heartaches we would hear!  The ‘if only’s’ would abound.  Regrets about what was said or wasn’t said, what was done or wasn’t done, would be rehearsed.  Magical thinking would also be present and would torment.  “If I had been a different person, or just done what they’d asked, they would have loved me.”  Death brings a finality that is both painful and comforting.  Painful because nothing more can be done to improve the relationship.  But comforting because we can get off the treadmill of trying so hard to get loved.

God can work His works of grace no matter what.  The indwelling fullness of the Holy Spirit is never more palpable than when experienced in vast emptiness.