Our lives are woven with threads of disinformation that distort who we are and why we are here. That’s why we need God—He’s the only source of truth we can depend on.
The great lie, the original sin that blinds us, began at the dawn of humanity. It was a deception whispered by the serpent in the Garden of Eden, questioning God’s good intentions and sowing doubt in Eve’s heart. The cunning snake twisted God’s command to obey Him—a command meant for boundless love and protection—into a story of control and repression.
Since the moment Eve embraced doubt and turned her back on God, humanity has been in a constant struggle. We stumble through life awkwardly, desperately trying to trust something to return us to the peace and joy we were initially intended for.
This same doubt in God’s goodness led me to believe I was unworthy of love as a result of my father’s desertion when I was a young child. Despite my mother’s attempts to convince me otherwise, I fell for the deception. I was certain in the deepest parts of my heart—I was not worthy of sticking around for.
At such a tender age, my faith cracked before it had the chance to take root. And no matter what remedies I tried as an adult—success, validation, relationships—nothing could shake the deep abandonment and shame that trailed me like a shadow.
Without trust in God or a human father to love me, I bought into the delusion that I had to do life on my own. Unfortunately, people became nothing more than tools for my survival to be cast aside when they no longer served me and before they could have the chance to betray me.
I played this soul-crushing game for most of my life, wearing the mask of someone in control, while underneath it all, I lived in complete anxiety. I rationalized my perspective, blaming the world as harsh and that I needed to do whatever I could to get by.
Thankfully, God broke through this delusion on one ordinary and otherwise unremarkable day a few years ago, in a moment that can only be described as divine intervention.
Driving home from the grocery store, I passed the local Catholic church as I often did. But this time, I felt a quiet nudge from within that said, “Why don’t you go in?” There was such an undeniable certainty about the inner prompting that I walked into Mass the following Sunday for the first time in years.
In the coming weeks, with no expectations other than curiosity, I encountered the reality of Jesus’ resurrection in a way I had never grasped before. He was alive, powerful, and more real than anything. Jesus was not a fantasy or a distant historical figure but a present, palpable embodiment of God’s love breaking through to me and the entire suffering of humanity.
I began to understand that no power in this world—not abandonment, not shame, not anything—could hold me captive if I had faith in the resurrected Jesus. This miracle of miracles was the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus told me that I am God’s beloved daughter, unlike what the great lie had me believe.
My eyes were further opened by a priest who told me that to fully enjoy my God-given identity, as Jesus offered, I must free my heart with forgiveness, dismantling the judgment, guilt, and blame that held the great lie of unworthiness in place. He encouraged me to reach out and forgive my father, no matter how difficult. Nothing less than my eternal peace and happiness were at stake.
Until then, I never knew my father, except for one painful, bitter, and disappointing reunion with him years earlier, followed by a cold, distant silence. Trusting the wisdom of Jesus to forgive as God has forgiven me, more than my intellect, I called my father the next day, to his surprise and delight.
Afterward, we exchanged a few calls and emails. Although my father continued to be evasive about why he left or never kept in touch, he apologized for the pain his absence caused me. I accepted his apology and thought that was that.
However, God was not done with me yet.
Some months later, I spoke to his girlfriend, who was in extreme distress caring for my father as he was near death from cancer, something he had kept from me. She asked if I would come and see him. For a moment, I was conflicted. I felt no surge of obligation or daughterly love for this man I hardly knew.
However, from somewhere deep within, another inner nudge told me that to forgive, I must give him the support he never gave me, no matter the hardship, emotionally or financially. Without this action, my forgiveness would be empty words devoid of transformative value.
The next day, I hopped on a plane and flew across the country to be at his hospital bedside for four days. His body and mind were ravaged by illness and morphine. He longed to hug and kiss me, but I couldn’t bring myself to get that close to someone who was a stranger in my eyes. To him, I was the daughter he quietly ached for. His lifelong regret and pain were revealed in one solitary tear that escaped his helpless brown eyes.
Although I couldn’t embrace him, I was inspired to hold his hand and pray. As I prayed many decades of the rosary to a man who hadn’t practiced his faith since childhood, a calm came over him. Between labored breaths, he would try to follow along with me, uttering, “Holy Mary, Holy Mary…”
Suddenly, with a surge of energy uncharacteristic of a dying person, he looked straight at me and said, “You gave me the meaning. I didn’t know what it was, but you gave it to me. I seek God’s counsel through you.”
My heart burst with an unexpected compassion for him. I no longer saw my father as the betraying monster I had made him out to be but as a lost soul, just like me, searching for God’s peace. An overwhelming love that was not about need or expectation but more like pure understanding rushed through me.
Two days after I returned home, my father passed away.
I’ve tried to make sense of what happened in the months since. Believing in forgiveness is very different from acting on it. Before visiting my father, I believed in the redemptive power of forgiveness that Jesus so powerfully demonstrated on the cross. Afterward, I had faith in it.
And the fruits of forgiveness continue to surprise me. Day by day, with less bitterness and resentment to cling to, the great lie of abandonment and shame that I blamed on my father has begun to unravel itself. Peace and joy are rising where grief once stood. The oppressive clouds of my past are parting to reveal moments of grace.
I have learned from Jesus that spiritually, the only way to undo the distortion that holds me back from the peace and joy God intended is to offer small and large acts of unmerited forgiveness to others. Only then can I experience the tangible effects of God’s love, which is the peace and sustenance that nothing in this world can offer.
Forgiveness is not easy, but it’s worth it. No one wants to give to the one who steals, and no one wants to walk two miles when only one is required. Yet, that’s what Jesus says we must do to untangle ourselves from the lies that distort our identity and block our experience of tranformative love.
Looking back now, despite the risks to my heart, I can see that the most painful parts of my life can be the most beautiful ones when forgiveness is acted upon. As is promised in scripture, God makes all things work together for good—for a good that is beyond human comprehension.
To undo the great lie of your life, who do you need to forgive?
The Radical Catholic 
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