The Greatest Thing

 I think this week’s theme is pretty interesting, and I have been looking for something to spark….creativity in me. ..so here’s the question:

What is the greatest example of forgiveness that you have ever seen?

    This is rather tough because instinctively I want to write about things that have been done to me and then required my forgiveness. There’s been a lot! But I think I haven’t come to my greatest act of forgiveness in my life.  In fact, I am still working on it.

    So to think outside of myself for a moment, I think the greatest act of forgiveness I have ever wittnessed is when my grandmother died.  And the main reason I believe it was the greatest act of forgiveness is because I don’t think she did it knowingly. I think she did it freely and without thought because thats who she was.

    I didn’t have the opportunity to ever be close to my grandmother. By the time I was born she and my grandfather were so far into their singing, avangelistic career that they were never around and eventually they moved 3000 miles away. So I am not writing this because I am partial or biased to my grandmother, but because she was a stranger to me and still died a great woman spiritually.

    Growing up here in southeast Missouri, my grandmother was raised with two brothers and a sister, a fiesty mother and an abusive father. From stories I have heard, her father would beat her older sister, yell at them all, and did a lot of psychological damage to the entire family. But he also had a mistress he kept, and had a whole other life. I have also learned he was nicer, and partial to my grandmother, and based on the severity of his abuse on his other three children, I can’t help but wonder WHY he never lashed out at my grandmother in that way. Was there another kind of abuse going on that was silent? Unspoken of?  For years, even after she was married,(and this was told after her death) she was never touchy-feely with my grandfather. According to him she never just let herself go in that intimate way, she held back a lot.

    More than anything, she never spoke a word of why. I can’t say for certain of the abuse I am hinting at, but something inside of me tells me I am not too far off from my conclusion. You know how when you know something for certain, that no other thought or scenario makes sense or fits? Thats what I speak of.  Her parents didn’t hug her, or tell her she could amount to something great, and aspire to be a wonderful woman. One time my mom was complimenting me, and she told my mom she shouldn’t do that, that by doing so would give me a big ego. I was sitting right there when she said it, and I must say I was shocked, I thought she was crazy.

    But as if growing up in a sad, unloving household wasn’t enough, she married a man I believe might have been much worse than her own father. My grandfather is the most dominate, power hungry, egotistical, selfish man you’ll ever meet. He controlled everything my grandmother did, she had to be his trophy wife, she couldn’t have her own friends or a sliver of independence. Her entire life revolved around her husband. He put her down as her own father had done, he thought for her, and expected her to give up her soul to him. And she did. He has a venomous tongue, he has said horribly mean things to me, an his own children, I can only imagine what he said to her in the privacy of their own home.

    Before she died she had told my mom of the two occasions in which my grandfather had slapped her, which infuriated me even more. I think it was that moment in time I lost total respect for that man. But not to stray from the topic, he wasn’t a good husband. When she died, and my grandfather two months later married another woman and moved away, my mom was going through everything that was left behind, and found my grandmothers bible that she used for 30+ years. Everything that talked about freedom, and flying, and happiness was underlined, highlighted, boxed in, anything to savor the phrase. I think thats when I realized how trapped she truely felt her whole life.

    She was a gracious woman, she provided for her family, she loved her family, she devoted her whole life to her husband, put him before her own children, and never once complained, even though inside she felt otherwise.

    As she lay dying on her hospital, awake, but I am not sure how concious of her surroundings she was, she’d come to and ask for her husband. It was that day that I realized that now matter how aweful he had treated her, and no matter what past she came from, her love far outweighed the bad that had been dished out to her whole life. She forgave my grandfather, (and her own father whom she only ever talked about with kidness and adoration) for way he treated her, from the life he robbed her of, and accepted him for the man he was. She wanted her husband by herside, because that was her whole life.  To you or myself it would seem crazy, we all know a woman like that deserves so much more from life, but I think as she was dying I saw content on her face. I think my grandfather (as well as her own father) could have been the devil himself and she would have stood by his side anyways, and loved him even more.

    I think thats the greatest act of forgiveness, because I don’t think I (or many others) could forgive something like that so easily. I don’t think we would be so strong as to never waiver from our love to search for something we thought we deserved. She kept on loving, living and forgiving because she knew thats what she had to do, it was the right thing to do. I think its the only thing she actually did for herself, not for anyone elses benefit.