Two times. I met my grandpa two times in my entire life.

A severed relationship is beyond difficult when it includes relatives. If you’ve lived long enough, you’ve probably found yourself estranged from a family member. You can learn to live without this person in your life. But how do you handle the feelings of emotion that begin to flood you when you either hear of that person’s death or that they have little time to live?

How should you react? Should you act as if you are on good terms with this person? Should you avoid seeing them because God would understand? These are not easy questions to answer when someone who should be near and dear to you is distant and destructive to you.

I grew up with two amazing parents and three wonderful grandparents. All five of these individuals taught me what it meant to love and be loved by other humans. But my grandpa was different. He was selfish. Life centered around him.

He wasn’t just a bad grandpa. Before that, he was a terrible dad. Absent and self-absorbed, my grandpa eventually deserted his family back in the 1950s. He left his wife and six children. One of those children had down syndrome. My grandma was abandoned with six mouths to feed.

What my grandpa did was rotten. To the core. Who does that? Who “up and leaves” their family to fend for themselves? And this was in an age when almost all women relied upon their husband’s income. I’ve been told a few times over the years that my grandma was on the brink of a nervous breakdown because of all the stress and financial pressures of raising six kids. When I think about my grandpa, this verse comes to mind:

Anyone who doesn’t provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever (1 Timothy 5:8).

My grandma survived the first several turbulent years of “single motherhood”. The six children eventually grew up. One of those children was my dad. He was the opposite of his dad.

My grandpa was pre-occupied on his own stuff, my dad was ever-present with his children.

My grandpa worked so that he could buy himself a new car almost every year, my dad worked so that he could pay for his children’s college.

My grandpa ended up leaving his family, my dad is the glue that holds his family together.

My grandpa lost the opportunity to know his dozens of grandchildren, my dad daily hangs out with his grandchildren.  

Two men from the same bloodline. Complete opposites. My dad is my hero. My grandpa was a villain. I don’t have any happy memories of my grandpa. Zero. I cannot think of one good moment with him. The last time I saw him, I was eighteen years old. And after spending a little time with him, I left feeling like he didn’t want us to ever come back again. He closed the door on any potential relationship with us.

I was okay with never seeing him again. But I had some deep bitterness and hatred hidden in my heart towards him. I despised what he did to my grandma. I loathed how he abandoned my dad, three aunts and two uncles.

Then one day he died.

Several years had passed since my last encounter with him at age eighteen. My dad called and shared the news with me. I didn’t feel emotion. He might have been my biological grandpa, but he was a stranger to me.

My dad asked if I would like to officiate my grandpa’s memorial service. I immediately said,

“Nope.”

I shot back a response that now seems careless: “Why are you even having a memorial service for him? He doesn’t deserve it.”

My dad told me he understood my position and respected it and would let the rest of his family know that they would need to find someone else to lead the memorial service.

I regret saying,

“Nope.”

Many years have passed since his death. I genuinely wish I would have handled this differently.

Looking back at my younger self, I wish I would have had more wisdom and compassion for the events that were unfolding. I allowed bitterness, hatred and self-protection to direct my thoughts and words. And I regret it.

I wish I would have looked into the hearts of my dad, aunts and uncles and saw that they needed a time to heal from all the pain from their past. I could have stood before them and helped them work through those feelings and guided them towards closure.

I wish that I could have still loved my grandpa even though he never showed an ounce of love to me. I could have shared with the small crowd that God loved grandpa and created him in His image and that grandpa’s life is a perfect picture of why we all need grace.

I wish I would have gone to the memorial service and hugged my grandma and thanked her for fighting hard for her family. I would have encouraged her that she was the most amazing “single mom” I have ever met.

But I didn’t do any of those things. And I regret it. I’ve never understood people who say that they have “no regrets” in this life. I was watching a documentary on a famous singer the other day. She had been popular in our culture for approximately twenty years and had been through several difficult times in her life, mostly because of her immature actions. The interviewer asked her if she would have done anything different in her 20s or 30s. Her answer was no. She stated that she had no regrets. Really?

I sure have regrets. There are certain events I wish I could turn back the clock and do differently. But life doesn’t work that way. I wish I would have honored my grandpa even though he didn’t deserve it. He deserved avoidance and ridicule, and so that is what my grudge-filled heart gave him.

I should have learned a lesson from my dad. Did you know that my dad never spoke derogatorily about my grandpa? He could have complained about how hard his dad made his past. But he never blamed his old man for having to work at an early age to help put food on the table after his departure. My grandpa made my dad’s life so much harder than it needed to be, but I never sensed any kind of unforgiveness.

I am convicted to the core of my being that my dad was one of the best “husbands-fathers” to walk the planet because he RELEASED the POISON of his own father’s past.

My dad was NOT CHAINED to his dad’s despicable shortcomings. My dad didn’t try to dig deep to get all the answers about why his own dad was rotten. I have seen too many people try to find an answer that doesn’t exist. You can torture yourself over why someone did what they did, but in the end you’re right where you started.

Here is the SECRET: Accept that you might never find the root cause for your relative’s behavior.

The ability to show care, concern and compassion to a family member who doesn’t deserve it lies exactly upon whether or not you are willing to forgive that person of whatever wretched sin they committed in the past (or even how they are acting in the present). Fixing a relationship takes two people, but forgiving only takes you. Don’t bottle up all of your hurt, instead pray to your heavenly Father so that He can heal your wounds.

Here is another SECRET: Expect nothing from them. Be kind. Bite your tongue. Give generously.

Don’t set such high expectations of them that you are devastated when they fail you.   

But you might ask, “What if they are already dead?”

You can still forgive him or her. You can still soften your heart to whatever the Lord wants to teach you.

Life is too short to hold onto bitterness and resentment. We might think that these emotions are necessary, but they are keeping you from becoming the person God wants you to become.  

Be determined that you will not act like them. But don’t think that you are better than them and that you would never stoop to their level of living. Satan will sniff out that pride and lay a trap for you to fall into some of the same problems that you hate about someone else.

There are some relationships that will never “get fixed” in this lifetime. What will you do when death knocks at your door and after walking around in heaven for a few days you see someone that surprises you? You will walk up to them and give them a hug. That’s what you’ll do. Because God has reconciled all things to Himself.

If my grandpa is in heaven, I will embrace him when I see him someday. Not because he deserves it. But because I will be completely filled with the perfect love of Christ. And he will also be made perfect in Christ’s love. And he will have an eternity to be a much better grandpa.

The most powerful thing you can do for your mind and heart when you are struggling with an estranged person is to picture that moment in heaven when you both lock eyes with each other. If they aren’t in heaven, then you won’t have to face them. But if they are, God will have made all things new.

New beginnings and second chances…that will be one of the best realities of heaven.

We might be surprised at who we see in heaven. But why should we be? Jesus seemed obsessed with inviting sinners into His kingdom and He made the path to salvation simple, sure and filled with amazing grace:

"In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace" (Ephesians 1:7).