05/28/2026
The Oil Of Joy Family Restoration
The layers of forgiveness
Thirty years ago, a Saturday night migraine opened a door that I never knew existed. On the other side of it lay memories, forgiveness, and the first real taste of freedom - something I had never experienced before. As the Bible says in Ephesians 6:12, our struggle is not against flesh and blood. That day, I returned home from work early, plagued by pulsating pain behind my eyes. I lay down, hoping that sleep would quiet the pain, but it persisted, hour after hour, until it became unbearable by evening. Having lived with headaches for years, from my teens into my thirties, this one felt different. It was deeper, as if something older than pain was pressing its way to the surface. We were supposed to have a prayer meeting at my house that night, but by late afternoon, I knew I couldn't manage it. I started calling people to cancel, all I needed was darkness, silence, and for the pain to pass. However, I forgot to call one person. Around 7 o'clock, there was a knock at the door. Greg and Tammy stood on my porch, and Greg told me that he had not planned to come but felt led by the Holy Spirit to pray for me. I remember feeling both grateful and miserable at the same time. I let him in, and we barely had time to sit down before Greg reached for the anointing oil and touched my head. In an instant, my living room was gone, and I was a little girl again, running into my father's house, excited to see him. My parents had separated, and I had missed him terribly. I reached the house, ran through it, looking for him, and found him upstairs with another woman. I remember the shock, the confusion, and the hurt. I did not understand what I had seen, only that something inside of me broke. I ran back to the car, crying, carrying a grief that I was too young to name. Something settled inside of me - he did not want me. In later years, as that memory rushed back, the Holy Spirit showed me what I had never understood: my father was not the true source of my destruction. The enemy had used his brokenness to wound me. Just like that, compassion broke through, and pain that had lived for years began to heal. Forgiveness rose in me, followed by love. By the time the prayer ended, the headache was gone, and it never returned. However, that night was only the beginning. Forgiveness had opened the wound, but healing still had to reach its deepest part. That first moment of freedom changed me, but it did not erase everything at once. Some wounds heal like a door flung open; others heal slowly, in layers, as they reach places where pain has lived for years. Not long after that, I told my father how deeply his choices had hurt me. He met me with anger and cut the conversation short. But a week later, I felt led to call him, this time with no demands, except to say that I loved him and forgave him. When he answered, he said, 'I do not have a daughter.' Once, those words would have shattered me, but this time they did not. I told him again that I loved him and forgave him, and then we hung up. We never spoke again. Soon afterwards, I dreamed that we were sitting face-to-face in a shallow pool of water, and I knew that healing was still taking place. The next day, I got a call saying that if I wanted to see my father before he died, I needed to come to the hospital. He had cancer. When I arrived, an unexplainable peace met me there. I rubbed lotion on his feet, the way I had when I was a little girl, before my parents separated - one of the few tender memories I still carried. Later, when we were alone, I prayed over him, and as I said softly, the room felt full of the Lord's presence. Still, in Holy he died that night, and instead of devastation, I was left with peace. God had done what I could never have done on my own - He had healed my heart. That night taught me that forgiveness is not weakness; it is release, and sometimes release comes in layers, one wound at a time. Even now, I believe that many families live beneath wounds they do not know how to name, but I also believe that healing is possible. What began for me with pain, memory, and prayer became a story of release. Forgiveness did not excuse what happened; it broke its hold on me, and when that hold finally loosened, peace stepped in.
Vici Parrish
One step of God’s Grace many more to come.
