For us …

I had never seen my mother sit quietly and cry.

Not like she did that morning, anyway.

I’ve mentioned that my father wasn’t a very good man, but this was a time when he was at his ugliest.

I was barely a teenager, and just one of my seven sisters lived at home with me and my parents. We had moved from a large ranch in Northern Arizona back to the Phoenix area. That first night, my sister and I stayed at the home of a family friend while my parents stayed in a cheap motel.

That was the night my father finally beat my mother.

He had finally decided he really was going to leave her, but there was a catch: he insisted he take me with him. My mother insisted there was no way I was going with him. He tried to physically impose his will on her.

In the morning, she told him she would walk over to the store to get them some food. Instead, when she got out, she called for help and we picked her up at the convenience store.

Her eye was blackened, her face bruised. She looked as if every ounce of energy had been drained from her from the night’s ordeal. Her strength faded to a silent, slow sob in the front seat of the car.

My heart was broken, not simply because of what she had endured, but because she faced a beating for me. She was not willing to let me go.

Long ago, Jesus Christ took a beating on behalf of us. He was not willing to let us go to sin. Instead, He endured physical punishment, and then offered His own life on our behalf so that we could be free from sin.

“Jesus said, ‘So if the Son sets you free, you are truly free,'” John 8:36.