N8tivegirl

The Eyes of the Innocent

The eyes of the innocent are always open.

What happens behind closed doors is never as hidden as we think.

Children see more than we realize.

They hear what we believe they can’t hear.

They feel what we never explain.

What is done in the dark eventually comes into the light.

Secrets have a way of lingering—and later, they echo.

When innocence grows into adulthood, it often carries what it was never meant to hold.

Our habits.

Our wounds.

Our unresolved pain.

And we wonder, Why do they act this way? Where did this come from?

The answer is often closer than we want to admit.

It’s hard to look in the mirror when pride stands in the way.

It’s easier to point fingers than to say, I played a part in this.

Yet parenting—at its core—is a sacred trust.

We are given the gift of nurturing a spirit entrusted to us by God.

Many parents fall short—not always because they didn’t care,

but because they were trying to give what they themselves never received.

Some were raised without examples of love, consistency, or faith.

Some were still searching for love themselves.

Some were surviving, not parenting.

Jesus gives us a picture of this complexity in the story of the prodigal son.

The son left, squandered everything, and returned broken and ashamed.

But the father did not lecture.

He did not tally failures.

He ran to meet him.

That is the heart of a parent who understands grace.

It is difficult to admit where we missed the mark.

It is painful to acknowledge mistakes.

But pretending doesn’t heal what honesty can.

Some try to replace presence with provision.

Others don’t know how to begin, so they walk away.

And some never learned how to parent because no one parented them well.

This does not make them monsters.

It makes them human.

But healing requires responsibility—not condemnation.

There comes a moment when we must stop allowing our past wounds to dictate our future relationships.

When we must surrender what shaped us instead of letting it shape everything else.

Sometimes healing looks like forgiveness.

And sometimes it looks like humility.

Sometimes the bravest words we can say are,

“Will you forgive me?”

spoken without defense, without excuses.

Because forgiveness is not about blame—it’s about release.

The eyes of the innocent are still watching.

And it is never too late to show them what healing looks like.