By Nikki Mattison, Op-ed contributor
As a little girl, all I wanted was to live with my parents.
My grandparents raised me because my parents were addicted to drugs. My mom and dad would be in my life one day, filling me with hope, and behind bars the next. But no matter how often they let me down, I would stare out my grandparents’ front window, waiting for the car that never came.
When I was 13, my mom and I got a place together. I felt like my dreams of a normal life were coming true. Then, about two months after we moved in, police raided our apartment. They arrested my mom and took her away, barefoot, while I screamed in the corner.
When I hear about how more adult children are cutting off contact with their parents, I understand why. For years, my parents’ behavior left me depressed and full of rage. Young people today feel less pressure than previous generations to preserve family ties, and estrangement seems easier than ongoing relational pain. But going “no contact” isn’t the only way to find peace.
After I left my grandparents’ house, I built the stability I craved: a loving husband, two sons, a job, and a starter home. My husband, Wes, brought us to church. There I met Jesus and realized how much He loved me. Life was good.
Then one day, I pulled into my driveway and saw someone I didn’t expect.
My dad had recently been released from prison. I had seen him several times since then; he had been to our house and seen my boys. But on that day, everything he owned was stuffed in the back of his four-door sedan. He had been kicked out of his halfway house and was hoping to sleep on our couch.
Reluctantly, I told my dad he could stay for a few days. He threw his things in the garage and volunteered to start watching our boys while Wes and I went to work. He’d get on the floor to play with them and take them for walks in a stroller. As days turned into weeks and weeks to months, he asked our permission to convert a shed in our backyard into a studio apartment. He rose to the occasion like never before. I watched his eyes light up with new purpose: being “papa” to my sons.
I admit I still had walls up; I didn’t want my kids’ hearts to get broken. But the disappointment I braced for never came. Instead, my dad got a job and opened his first bank account.
One day, my 3-year-old son looked out the sliding-glass door and said, “My papa lives in my backyard. This is the coolest thing ever.”
Seeing the joy on my son’s face, I thought this just might work.
That was in 2008. The years passed, and my dad stayed. When my mom, clean and sober, had trouble paying her rent, it was Wes who said, “Well, she could move in, too, if your dad converts the garage.”
And so, in a way, I got what I always wanted: I live with my parents. It’s amazing to witness them making the most of their second chance. My kids only know them as papa and nana, the ones who make them pancakes and drop them off at school. They can’t remember life without them.
That doesn’t mean our arrangement is perfect — or easy. Sometimes I catch myself vibrating with resentment, wondering why my parents couldn’t have poured into me the way they pour into my kids. But Wes and our church have supported me, and Jesus has patiently taught me the meaning of forgiveness.
I used to think forgiveness had contingencies. Now I see it as reckless grace that flows from my Lord and Savior — a gift that I pay forward. That doesn’t mean I accept the unacceptable. In abusive situations, I don’t have to allow a harmful person into my life. But forgiveness itself — a determined posture of the heart to choose love and refuse bitterness — is always possible, and it benefits me even more than the person who wronged me.
Today, I work for Prison Fellowship Angel Tree, the program my dad used to send me Christmas presents while he was incarcerated. Now it’s my privilege to help strengthen relationships between parents behind bars and their children. I sit with kids whose pain I recognize. I can look them in the eyes and say, “I used to be you. I know the nights you cry yourself to sleep.” Without the things I experienced, I would never be able to assure them there is hope for repairing broken relationships. I tell them that forgiveness is a journey, and it never really ends — but it never begins, either, unless we open the door.
Nikki Mattison is the Angel Tree events manager at Prison Fellowship.