After the Story - Choices Like Rivers - Episode 61
After the Story - Choices Like Rivers - Episode 61
This podcast discusses each chapter of Choices Like Rivers and each episode is posted directly after the book episode. This to Chapter 21 Section 3
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Every single time I read this section I well up with tears. This is the culmination of it all. Through Molly Sue’s arrival and then subsequent removal, Sharon had grown. She had laid down her pain and unforgiveness.
Through her sufferings she has grown from a hard and cold person, unfeeling and unforgiving to where she is now. She wanted Molly Sue for herself. She coveted a child and Molly Sue was that perfect child.
But deep inside she knew something was wrong. She knew her all-consuming compulsion to have Molly Sue was not right. It sank her deeper into despair. But losing Molly Sue after having her, sent her on a journey of personal discovery thanks to God and her friends.
She has come so far in her healing. She is no longer the selfish and hard hearted person she had once been. And in this section we see how her new heart responds…
God, please, please don’t let her mommy die. I’ll gladly give Molly Sue up once and for all if you will just let her mommy live. Please God, please, please, Sharon begged.
Then in the depths of her soul Sharon heard, “Now, you are ready. Now, you know what true love is. It is sacrificing your own selfish desires for another, no matter how painful that sacrifice may be.”
Sharon now genuinely loved Molly Sue so much that she couldn’t bear seeing her hurt so terribly in losing her mother. So, she desperately prayed to God to heal her mother. She genuinely didn’t care if she had Molly Sue for her own or not. She ONLY wanted the best for her and for her pain to stop.
It was at that very moment that God showed Sharon that finally, finally she knew what true love was. That true love was unselfish even if it meant pain for her.
This is the bar. This is the measure by how we love. Do we love this way? Can it even be called love if we don’t? Now that is the question.
We toss that word love around and say we love this or that. And it has diluted the very meaning of the word. In the Greek the word love has several meanings, but we in the English language only have one with varying degrees of intensity determined by how we use it.
God’s love is the agape kind of love. The kind of love we finally see Sharon have for Molly Sue. His selfless love gave his son for us even though he knew it would cause him the intense pain of watching his son hang on the cross.
Finally Sharon was able to love Molly Sue in the way she should, and could now be her mother. And the word that Jesus had spoken to Molly Sue on Christmas morning when she had asked for her mother for a Christmas present, is now complete.
I purposely didn’t say what God had said to Molly Sue that morning, but now we know he told her as Sharon walked down the hallway towards her, that Sharon would be her new mother.
How confusing and momentarily painful it must have been for Molly Sue to have been taken from Sharon by the court. But for her to have the mother that she deserved, and for Sharon to become the woman she deserved to be, it was necessary for a time.
And Donna too was now free. The symbolism of the chain suddenly rusted through and falling free upon Donna’s death was profound.
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