Recently my daughter had a car accident. It happened one night when she had stayed late at work and someone ran a red light and hit the back end of her car. Her car was totaled. We both were on edge for quite a few weeks after this happened.

After this accident we had some pretty awful fights. In the midst of the fighting she told me that she didn’t think I was treating her like the responsible person that she was. I thought about that for awhile and realized that I had felt the same way when I was her age. My parents still sometimes treat me like a child and it drives me crazy.

I knew I admired my daughter for all of the good decisions she has made recently. I was very proud of her when she got into the Respiratory Therapy program at our local community college. I was impressed with how hard she has worked over the past few years to become independent. I have many times been in awe of how many friends she has and how wonderful she is to her friends. She is a very intelligent and resourceful individual and I thought she knew that but I hadn’t told her.

After we had an awful fight I started praying about my relationship with her. I was urged by the Holy Spirit to write a letter to her the next morning and I did just that. I wrote in the letter all of the things I admired in her and was proud of her for accomplishing. I mentioned one struggle that she is still enduring but told her that I knew she would gain victory in that area.

I told her that I was available if she needed any help but I would not push my opinion on her. It was a letter of healing because it was a letter from the Holy Spirit.

My mother has had the tendency to write letters to her children and grandchildren also. But they are letters of derision and condemnation because they emanate from her pride not the Holy Spirit. Some of them are very hateful in context. It is hard to handle when you get a letter like this from anyone, much less your mother. It never accomplishes any healing, instead, many times I pull away from my mother when I get a letter like this from her.

Sometimes I wonder if I am more aware of the power of words because I am a blogger and a writer. I think it may be more than that though. One of my favorite Bible verses is Ephesians 4:29 “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.”

My daughter was not home when I put the letter on her desk but I was home the morning she read it. She came downstairs and said, “Thanks for the letter.” and our fighting stopped.