But I didn’t want her to feel any guilt because that wasn’t my intention or business. I only wanted to love her and find her blameless, and as she began to come apart, I found that my own strength returned and my own crying began to settle.

You would think that it would take more than a few words to shatter my mother’s hardened shell after living so many years under her burden of guilt, and you would be right. Far more than a few words. Something with far more power than mere words.

A true expression of love born of the heart, not the mouth. In the space of that love, no words are required. My mother was being deeply impacted by something I could hardly understand myself and still, I gave it with all of my heart.

I saw myself as a tree, administering healing over a wounded spirit who had come to me for love. She was my mother and I was only too willing to stroke her head and give her as much love as she could possibly drink in. And to offer her a few words as well.

“I love you, Mother. It’s all going to be okay.”

“I’m sorry.” She sobbed into my pajama top. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, Mother . . .”

“I didn’t know what to do. I’m so confused. I’m so sorry.”

I had always wondered something about the crucifixion scene—the part where Jesus says, ‘Forgive them for they know not what they do.’

It had confused me because I’d thought, Well of course they know what they are doing. They’re treating him with cruelty. They’re pounding nails into him and hanging him up on a cross. Every cruel person always knows that they’re being cruel.

But in that moment with my mother begging on my belly, I understood perfectly. She, like those who’d crucified Jesus, had justified what she’d done and made it permissible in her own mind. And so goes the whole human race.

They should have known better, and there was plenty of cause for blame, and yet blamelessness had been offered. That was grace and that was me, ministering forgiveness to my mother by offering her no blame.

I drew a deep breath and I said what was in my spirit to say.

“I forgive you, Mother. You’ve done nothing wrong to me.”

The moment I said it, a tingling spread over my scalp.

Mother’s crying eased and her body stilled.

“Nothing, Mother,” I said. As if following specifically routed electric circuits, the tingling sensation rode down my arms and spine. “You did nothing wrong to me.”

She sat up and stared at me with red eyes. “How can you say that?” she cried. “How can you even say that!?”

I’m sure there are ways I could have psychoanalyzed her angry response, but my mind wasn’t interested. It was captivated by the power flowing through my body, from head to foot. The current buzzed through my bones for a moment, and then it was gone, out the bottom of my feet.

Overcome by her own failures as a mother, Kathryn covered her face with both hands and wept. And I let her, silent now, still captivated by the lingering balm of that energy that had swept through my body. For a long while, we remained like that, me prone on my back, her sitting, basking in a power greater than both of us.

Something had happened to me, hadn’t it? Something about me had changed.

“What did you do to me, Mother?” I asked.

She shook her head in shame.

“Tell me what you did to me,” I said.

“You don’t understand, Eden. I had to. I can’t disobey. I just can’t go against him. I can’t . . .”

“Tell me, Mother. Tell me what you did to me.”

“I hurt you!” she blurted, pulling her hands from her face. “I took my little daughter and I . . .” She looked away, choked up by terrible guilt.

“You forced me under the water and made me stay in my closet and starved me?” I asked.

“Yes!” she sobbed. “Yes!”

“And tell me how Zeke hurt me.”

“He broke your leg!” she screamed, standing. “He commanded me to break it and when I didn’t he broke it!”

“He hurt your daughter,” I said.

“Yes! Yes, he hurt my daughter!” She was livid.

I let a beat pass.

“But don’t you see, Mother . . . I’m not hurt.” I sat up in bed and stared at her. “I don’t feel any of the wounds that were in my heart only yesterday.” I leaned over and began to unravel the bandages on my right leg. “I’m a water walker, Mother. Water walkers don’t assign blame. Only their costumes can be hurt, and costumes come and go.”

I continued to unwrap my leg.

“What are you doing?”

Zeke had opted not to put a cast on my leg so that walking was out of the question. But he’d never broken a water walker’s leg before, had he?

“I’m showing you how unhurt I am,” I said, and pulled the last of the bandage free.

My mother took a step back, eyes fixed on my right leg, which was smooth and white and showed not a single bruise, much less swelling, from any break.

“Sweet Jesus,” Mother breathed. “Oh dear, sweet baby Jesus.”

I swung my legs off the bed and pushed myself to my feet, still weak from the exhausting emotional journey I’d taken through the night. Then I walked to the window, parted the curtain so that I could see out, and stared in the direction of the lake.

“Sweet baby Jesus,” my mother said yet again. “You . . . What happened?”

I turned back to face her. “Forgiveness happened,” I said. “Just the way it’s supposed to happen.”

“You . . . Your leg isn’t broken.”

I looked down at my body. “No, it’s not.”

“But how?”

“I went for a walk on the lake last night,” I said.

“The lake? That’s why you’re wet? How . . . I . . . I don’t understand.”

“You don’t need to, Mother. I’m not sure I do either.” I approached her slowly, heart bursting with compassion. “There’s only one thing you need to know right now.”

Her eyes searched mine, stricken with apprehension. This was new territory for both of us.

“I’m your daughter,” I said, reaching for her hand. “You’re my mother and I love you with all of my heart. And if I love you that way, your Father loves you far more, just the way you are. You can’t possibly impress him or upset him, he’s not that small. Everything you’ve done, you’ve only done because you were lost, but today you are found by your daughter and your Father.”

Overwhelmed in ways that I couldn’t possibly fully grasp, Mother sank to her knees, took me into her arms, and wept. I held her and stroked her hair, feeling beautiful and whole and overflowing with gratefulness.

I had finally found my mother and I found her only by finding myself.

For a long time we held each other. I didn’t know what effect this might have on my mother, or her strict religious code, and honestly, I didn’t care. I felt utterly loved and invulnerable, both in my mother’s arms and apart from them.

Honestly, I felt as though I might be able to walk up to a bathtub and make the water float in the air if I wanted to, because in my mind’s eyes, the very water that had once been my grave was now life.

When the tears had subsided and Kathryn had run out of ways to express her remorse, she stood and paced, but even then new tears came. She couldn’t keep from looking at my leg.

“I don’t understand, Eden.” She sniffed and wiped the tears seeping from her eyes. “I just don’t know what to think.”

“There’s nothing to think, Mother. What’s done is done and there’s no harm.”

“You keep saying that, but all I can see is harm.” Guilt seemed to have a strangle hold on her, but that was her journey to take. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, sweetheart. You have to believe me.”

“You can’t hurt me.”

“Of course I can! I did!” She stared at me with red eyes. “I don’t know why I didn’t see it before . . . I . . .”

“It’s okay, neither did I. But we see now, right?”

She stared at my leg. “I see it but it’s still hard to believe. How could your leg just . . . heal?”