How forgiving someone many years later taught me a valuable lesson | Opinion
When we are young, we never think about getting old. We live for the moment. Then, Bam! you’re old. Now, don’t get me wrong; this column isn’t about the ills of growing old. It is about the lessons I have learned and joy that I have found along the way.
My life hasn’t been “No Crystal Stair,” but I’ve had a ladder that I’ve been able to climb. I have learned from the negatives that popped up in my life along the way, kicking them out when I needed to. I don’t know how I did it, except that I have always been a praying person — even as a child, a person who wanted to please the Lord by loving my fellow human beings.
Was I always successful? No. There were times when I was hurt so badly that in my mind I “plotted’ how I would get back at the person or persons who hurt me. Somehow, as I plotted my revenge, love and/or pity overcame my plot and I couldn’t carry it out. That happened in my childhood as well as in my adulthood.
Let me tell you a story. As a little girl living in Williston, Florida, before Momma got the courage to leave an abusive marriage, she had to see her sick mother who lived in Belle Glade. Momma left me and my brother Adam with our paternal grandmother. It was near Christmas and Momma hadn’t returned home yet.
One night after Daddy came home from work, I heard my grandma tell him, “You don’t have to get them children no toys… get them some coloring books and fruit. That’s enough for them.”
I didn’t want to believe that Santa Claus heard that conversation. Surely, if he had, he would ignore it and bring me the doll I wanted, the one with the “real” hair I could comb and style. And I just knew he would bring my little brother a shiny red truck that he could push around on the floor until he was exhausted.
I think I grew up a little more on that Christmas of 1942. Lil Brother and I got just what Grandma Beedie told Daddy to get us.
She must have had a conversation with Santa, too. Maybe she told him about the time I snuck into Mother Belle’s (a beloved neighbor) snuff stash and tried out a “dip.” It made me so sick that I stayed under the bed all day. That must have been it, I thought. She found out and told Santa I had been naughty.
That Christmas day in Williston was one of the saddest I can remember. We each got coloring books and wax crayons that bent under the slightest pressure. And we each got a brown paper bag with some nuts, and a couple of oranges and apples. I remember trying to be excited. What I remember most was my little brother crying his heart out.
Our little cousin Willie, who was my age, got a shiny red truck and lots of other toys. I can still hear my little brother crying because Willie wouldn’t let him play with his truck. It broke my 4-year-old heart.
When Momma came home, she was furious when she learned we hadn’t gotten any toys for Christmas. I think it was at that time she made up her mind to leave Daddy and Williston. We left in the spring of 1943.
I carried that Christmas scene in my heart for years, until I was 15, and saw Grandma Beedie for the first time since I was 5. For years, I’d plotted and planned the speech that I would say to her the next time I saw her. I would make her feel bad for the way she had treated us when we were little. That’s what I thought.
But when the day came that we saw her again, all I felt was love and pity for her. I loved her because she was our grandma and she was old. I pitied her because she had allowed enough evil to enter her heart to hurt her own grandchildren. And so, the speech that I had rehearsed for years in my mind, just disappeared from my thoughts. All I felt was love.
How did that happen? How could I forgive my grandma for ruining our Christmas? All I can tell you is that when a person asks the Lord to give her/him a clean heart, one that readily forgives, be prepared for God to answer your prayers in ways you never imagined. On my own, I would have continued to hold onto a grudge that Grandma Beedie didn’t know about.
Christmas morning in 1942 was my first lesson in forgiveness. It taught me to love Grandma Beedie in spite of the favoritism she showed toward our cousin Willie. It was a lesson I would carry with me throughout my elementary and high school years when there was always a bully to try to make my life miserable.
It was a lesson that taught me to love myself and not let my husband’s abusiveness determine what my future would look like.
Still, as a child, it wasn’t always easy; I had to learn how to turn the other cheek. I had to learn how to be kind to those who bullied me. I learned how to focus on something positive and beautiful, or I learned how to simply ignore them, and laugh them right out of my life. Sometimes, I cried before I could laugh.
We are all given a set of tools with which to navigate life’s journey. Perhaps my tools for living won’t work for you. Ask God to give you your own set, tools that He made specifically for you.
I handled life’s disappointments one way. You may handle yours differently. Yet, we can all have two things in common as we walk along life’s journey, and that’s forgiveness and love. The two are good food for our soul.
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