While Still a Long Way Off: Grace, Estrangement, and the Shocking Reach of the Father
Each week, the conversations I’m blessed with having on the Created in the Image of God show seem to take on a life of their own—weaving threads from the past, tangled skeins of pain and promise, and the slow, but steady process of learning to see more clearly, especially after surviving what most would never wish on a soul.
The last entries in this unfolding tapestry have been marked by absence—the loss of my younger sister in close succession to my older sister. Childhood in our family was not a stage for fairy tales. Those who have followed this journey know the measure of trauma we all carried. But of us three, my younger sister bore the heaviest, most isolating burden. Now, just weeks ago, her own life was cut short by a drunk driver, the final chapter of a story marked by separation and sorrow, much of it sharpened by a lasting estrangement from our father. Reconciliation, in the way we imagine it, never arrived.
If you read my prior blogs, you know the wrestling: with questions of belonging, responsibility, and the yearning to “occupy” one’s place on the earth. In those writings I tried to make sense of what it is to lose, to own, to steward—our inheritance not of land or treasure, but of pain transformed into purpose.
This week, with Laine Lawson Craft—parenting expert, best-selling author, and a voice for spiritual hope—I encountered a truth that unstitched some of my old assumptions. We spoke of prodigals, of the child who squandered his inheritance and found himself alone in a pigsty (Luke 15). But Laine brought out a detail that, while very familiar, affected me deeply with a profound insight. We know that “the father saw him while he was yet a long way off.” Before the son could rehearse his apology, before he could prove his sincerity or earn forgiveness, the father ran—arms wide, undignified, not caring for appearances—to meet his child.
Laine’s stories of her children, battered by their own battles with addiction and estrangement, echoed a rhythm I recognized in my own family’s tragedy. For years it pained me that my earthly father, and the father of my sisters, remained distant, and aloof. His belief in a specific set of laws and standards that he accepts, but others don’t has always created a distance and a separation. For years I held the same beliefs, and was even a minister teaching them to others. I suspect, though he never really said so, that my dad was mostly proud of me during those years. And having discharge those responsibilities faithfully, and finally reaching different, I believe more mature and advance perspectives, I could live with the fact that – having departed from those beliefs, my dad distanced himself from me, even as my beliefs would have enabled a greater closeness.
But for my younger sister I believe that the old wounds never quite closed. But perhaps, in a way more mysterious and beautiful than I can phrase, our heavenly Father did not wait for perfect timing or healing. He ran, while she was yet a long way off. The last weeks I have glimpsed, with unexpected clarity, the possibility that even when human restoration fails, divine reconciliation does not. Certainly, in her last waking moments, as the car turned right in front of, or perhaps even into her, on her motorcycle, on that deserted road, she thought of God. Such was her training, and in any case, deep within us, we all suspect, if not know, that an eternal home awaits us, a place of rest.
It calls to mind something a guest on a recent show shared—a line that’s been following me: “During every test, the teacher is always silent.” Life’s hardest lessons aren’t explained to us in real time. We sit, sweating, turning over the problem in our mind, longing for an answer or at least a hint. Only after the test is over—sometimes much, much later—does the teacher speak and the meaning emerge. In my case, as my life unfolds within these conversations, I see that, unbeknownst to me, God was preparing voices like Laine’s, and next week’s guest, Debbie Ausburn, to help me hear what I could not hear when I was grieving in silence.
It is both terrifying and strangely comforting. The lessons are awarded after the test, and sometimes the message arrives through the hands of others who have walked similar, crooked paths. The great surprise of grace is that it never depends on having done it all “right.” The father runs. He runs while we are still a long way off.
Next week, I’ll continue opening these hard-won lessons with Debbie Ausburn in “Raising Other People’s Children.” Debbie is a fierce advocate and author with the wisdom of lived experience—her work with foster children, step-parenting, and finding a path through unconventional families bears directly on the themes many of us carry. If your life, like mine, includes substitute families, second chances, or the ache of unfinished business, I encourage you to watch the sneak peek for Episode 155. And please, share this series with those who need it. Paid subscriptions help me continue to bring these voices forward; your support is truly welcome.
We close, as always, with hope mingled with humility, reaching out for mercy not just for ourselves, but for all who have traveled “a long way off” from home. Tonight, if you are grieving, bewildered, or unable to find the words for your longing, I invite you to join me in this prayer from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá for our departed sisters, mothers, or daughters:
“O my God, O Forgiver of sins and Dispeller of afflictions! O Thou Who art pardoning and merciful! I raise my suppliant hands to Thee, tearfully beseeching the court of Thy divine Essence to forgive, through Thy mercy and pardon, Thy handmaiden who hath ascended unto the seat of truth. Cause her, O Lord, to be overshadowed by the clouds of Thy bounty and favor, immerse her in the ocean of Thy forgiveness and clemency, and enable her to enter the sanctified abode, Thy heavenly Paradise.
Thou art, verily, the Mighty, the Compassionate, the Generous, the Merciful.
With gratitude to all who travel this road with me,
Wade Fransson
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