The Transforming Power of Radical Love

Welcome! I recently read a story, a story that made my heart just about burst out of my chest and I am so excited to share it with you! 

Before we jump into that, last week my daughter Rachel shared her story and I loved it so much because she clearly demonstrated the transformative power of healing and how finding her real identity set her free. Listen to this podcast if you want a bigger explanation of what went on in my heart: 

Okay, now let's get into today's topic: the power of a parent's love!

I love love love to read. At this exact moment I have 8 different books within about a six foot radius of me. 

I love books that are a little off the beaten path, written by authors that have the guts to tell their story in ALL of its pain and agony...and that can show me how they experienced the redemptive power of love within that same story. 

I meet Jesus in people like that. And I usually get startled into seeing how to love. Again. It’s a story I evidently need to hear a lot. 

Today I am going to share with you the story of Larry Malaney. I found this story in the book, The Furious Longing of God by Brennan Manning.

I was intrigued by Brennan Manning’s writing style. 

It is evident that he has experienced the grace of God in a profound way.

I was also startled to read that Brennan had been a priest but left the priesthood. (Not sure if he was asked to leave or left on his own accord.) He clearly said he struggled with sexual sin as well as alcohol. My priest scandal radar went up at that time but I kept reading.

Brennan confessed that after trying to be Mother Teresa, after trying for years and years and years to earn grace, he found peace and acceptance in the embrace of His Real Father. 

Yes. That. That’s the message that made me trust Brennan Manning.

In the 1960’s Brennan Manning was teaching at a university in Ohio where he met a student by the name of Larry Malaney.

According to Brennan, Larry was just about the ugliest human being he had ever run across. 

• Larry was short and extremely obese.
• He had a terrible case of acne.
• A bad lisp.
• Really bad hair.
• He wore dirty, wrinkled clothes and no shoes. 

He had extreme low self-esteem. In fact, Brennan states that he had never met another human being with such low self-esteem. 

Not one person on campus wanted to be near Larry. 

Larry was also a self-proclaimed agnostic; he had no belief in anything. 

During Christmas break Larry went back home to visit his family in Rhode Island. His parents were staunch Irishmen; his dad wore a suit and tie to dinner every evening.

The break was spent with Larry, “smelling like a Billy goat,” quarreling off and on with his father, which was their typical family experience. 

Towards the end of the break Larry told his dad that he was going back to university the next day. His dad replied that he would ride the bus with him for the first leg of the journey. 

The next morning father and son rode the bus together to the first stop.  

They stepped off the bus near the textile factory where his father worked. Across the street were six men; those six men worked with Larry’s father. 

They started making fun of Larry, calling him a fat pig. They made oinking noises and yelled, “If that kid was mine, I’d hide him the basement, I’d be so embarrassed.” 

The men were brutal. 

Larry didn’t react, he had heard it all before. He knew who he was. 

Then, right there at that bus stop, in front of those six jeering men, for the first time in Larry’s life, his father reached out, embraced him, kissed him on the lips and said,

“Larry, if your mother and I live to be two hundred years old, that wouldn’t be long enough to thank God for the gift He gave to us in you. I am so proud that you’re my son!”

Brennan Manning said that the radical transformation that occurred in Larry Malaney when he came back to university was hard to put into words. 

Larry cleaned up. He started dating a girl. He not only joined a fraternity, he became the president of the fraternity. He graduated with a 4.2 GPA, the first student to ever do so. He was a brilliant scholar. 

Larry went into (then Father) Brennan’s office and said, “Tell me about this man Jesus.” For six weeks, in half-hour increments, Fr. Brennan shared with Larry what the Holy Spirit had revealed to him about Jesus. 

After those six weeks, Larry said, “Okay.” 
 
On June 14, 1974, Larry Malaney was ordained a priest in the diocese of Providence, Rhode Island. He spent the next twenty years in a missionary in South America, totally “sold out to Jesus Christ.”

Why? Because of his father’s decision to bless. His father healed his son by his blessing.

“His father looked deeply into his son’s eyes, saw the good in Larry Malaney that Larry couldn’t see for himself, affirmed him with a furious love, and changed the whole direction of his son’s life.”

I love that so much. SO MUCH. 

That story made me cry. It made me think. We have SO MUCH POWER AS PARENTS!

I have two questions for you.

First, how would this story have been different if Larry’s father would have, at that bus stop, just sighed a heavy sigh….a sigh of recognition for all that was failing within his son? 

I can see myself sighing and telling my kid, “Okay, there’s your bus. See you later.” 

How would Larry’s life been different if his father would have done that?

Second question: 

What do you think happened to Larry’s father’s heart while he stood on the bus stop with his son? 

The father was not divine. He was human. He had clear expectations of his son and they were not being met.

Yet, amid the name-calling from his co-workers, he was able to look at his obese, ugly child...this leper...a leper oozing puss…..and he kissed him full on the mouth and bestowed a fatherly blessing upon him. 

Unbelievable.

What happened within his heart? How did he overcome his human pride? He had desires for his son, and those were totally unmet. How did he overcome all of that humanity within himself? 

The story doesn’t say, but I sort of think that God the Father had to have given him a moment of clarity, a gorgeous flash of insight, a “THIS IS MY BELOVED SON, IN WHOM I AM WELL PLEASED” kind of moment. 

A moment when the father saw the real. The authentic. The pure. The good. The lovely. Within himself as well as within his Larry.  

The understanding of who he really was set him free. His father accepted him as he was. The acceptance not was based on his behavior. 

It was not If/Then: “If” you act a certain way, “Then” I will love you. 

It was, “You are mine. Welcome.”

It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around a love like that, simply because I love If/Then. Without thinking. Because it seems so rational, so prudent. The behavior must be there first, right? 

But that’s not how God the Father loves. 

Parents, never EVER underestimate the power of your blessing on your child. How we speak, how we smile, how we accept them...all of it matters.  

If you are thinking to yourself, "I'm not sure how to do that," I understand. Before we can truly love, we must learn just how much God the Father loves US. 

Read how I learned how to trust God the Father: MY CONVERSION STORY. 

PS: Here's that book again:
Brennan Manning's The Furious Longing of God