Forgiveness Read Online Free PDF Page B

stopped walking. I could not discern all of what he was saying until he screamed at me, “You killed Gemmia, and everybody knows it but you!”
    I didn’t say a word. I couldn’t. Every muscle in my body was convulsing. I am still not sure how I found my keys or sped out of his driveway, spewing gravel in every direction. Racing like a bat out of hell down the quiet streets of the neighborhood, I started praying, “Have mercy, Lord! Forgive me, Lord! Restore me, Lord! Your grace is my sufficiency! Have mercy, Lord! Forgive me, Lord.” I felt lost. Actually, I was lost. My mind was racing so fast, I didn’t recognize where I was and didn’t know where I was going. I kept driving and praying until I received my next instruction, “Remember Lucy.”
    Lucy was Gemmia’s grandmother, my first husband’s mother. I married him as a 19-year-old, guilt-ridden, shame-filled single mother. A month after our wedding, he was deployed to Vietnam. He came back a year later addicted to heroin. After I gave birth to Gemmia, he was arrested for burglarizing his mother’s home. He fled New York to avoid prosecution. He had been gone almost three years when I started dating my second husband.
    Lucy, my ex-mother-in-law, wanted to remain connected to my children and me. I couldn’t even look at her. She represented my past and my past mistakes. I wanted to shut the door on that period of my life, but she had her foot in the door. Now that I was in a new relationship with a man who wanted me and accepted my children, I no longer had a need for her. Rather than have the conversation about how to adjust our relationship, I avoided her, at all costs to her heart and my soul.
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    “R EMEMBER L UCY . …” S HE REPRESENTED MY PAST AND MY PAST MISTAKES .
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    When Lucy would call, I was short, curt, and always busy. Although she never missed a birthday, Mother’s Day, or Christmas, I always had excuses for not bringing the children to visit and for not inviting her to visit them. As horrifying as it was to admit to myself, I had done to her exactly what I judged that my granddaughter’s father was now doing to me by withholding my granddaughter.
    I represented his past and his relationship with Gemmia, which had not ended well. He was married to another woman now, with other children of his own. In my mind, that had no bearing whatsoever on my relationship with my granddaughter. As I replayed the shovel scenario over and over, I realized that I was now sitting on the other side of the problem. I was now the grandmother longing to be connected to her grandchild, feeling hurt, dismissed, and disrespected for what seemed like no good reason.
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    T HERE IS NO SEPARATION … WHEN YOU FIND YOURSELF DOING WHAT SOMEONE ELSE HAS DONE TO YOU, FORGIVENESS DRIVES YOU HEADFIRST INTO PEACEFUL FREEDOM .
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    All of a sudden I was filled with enormous compassion for Lucy. I felt her hurt, her sadness, and my own shame. I was barely able to contain my grief as I realized what had happened and what was happening. The best I could do for myself was pull over to the side of the road, weep, and call my best friend Shaheerah. I knew she would walk me through the next moments, hours, or however long it would take for me to digest and understand what was going on. Shaheerah would understand. She would not judge me. Nor would she let me get away with any form of denial. I knew what I had to do because I knew that when you find yourself doing to someone else what was done to you, forgiveness drives you headfirst into peaceful freedom. Lord, did I want to be free.
    Forgiving myself was the only way I could get out of the ditch on the side of the road and take myself home. I forgave myself for every judgment I had held about Lucy and my granddaughter’s father. I forgave myself for marrying Gemmia’s father from a place of fear and perceived desperation. I forgave myself for not forgiving myself for being a teenage mother.
    In the flash of a moment, I