Passing On Forgiveness

So you have a heart attack, your heart is completely unstable, your body has been invaded by dozens of needles, you are stressed to the max - and then you get visitors.

Dutchman and I were talking.  I strapped to a table for now 40 hours at this point, he stressed over something he did not want to say but apparently felt compelled to.  It was about my father in law.  I mentioned his death last August.  Just let dead horses lay, really! And though I would not post this, I think I will because perhaps someone out there needs to understand forgiveness as well.

For those whom do not know, I had a civil marriage, which was to have been followed by a religious ceremony several months later.  Yeah, two kids knowing they should tie the knot but wanting to do it right and wait for the real ceremony to take place.  So, civil was in August, religious was to be on Valentines Day the following year. Only father in law found out, as he worked for the government, and exploded while I was in Mexico on a month long trip.  I came back in mid-September to address a problem in his church (at the youth's request) and swung by my best friend Don's apartment, used his hidden key to get in to drop my bags, and instead found my would be bride and him heavily engaged.

I quietly left.

Back home I found I had a letter from her dated a week after I had left for Mexico, telling me that her father had annulled the marriage so she saw no reason not to explore my list of friends she liked.....  Yeah, sure glad I found out before I got that letter!  Of course, her and I had a $220 phone call that afternoon!  I lost a great many friends that fall.  Even Dutchman, the only one to  apologize, fell to her seductive powers.  And as for me, my relationship with Udie had been completely above board.  Silly me, it seems!  But, I was not that kind of person in any event and I never would have thought it of any of my friends!

And here Dutchman, paced in my room, in ICU, as he worked his way through telling something he had never said before, from a conversation with my father in law many years earlier, part of the apology he never passed along.  Now at the time of my disaster with that family, their youngest daughter was head over heels for a guy named Kurt.  It really did not take discernment to know what a POC the guy was, but the family had known him most of his life, really loved him and his family - and I was the intruder.  Yeah, I was smart enough to never saying anything in front of them concerning this creature from the underworld.  But, said demon, understood extremely well that I knew whom and what he really was.  And years later, my in-laws were to discover exactly how miserable a creep he was as well.

And Dutchman was conflicted.  Make no mistake he loves his wife but he remembers too well his relationship with my wife.  It almost killed him to tell me of how the father in law had told him of his own distress at how wrong he and his wife had been about me and Kurt.  They had trusted Kurt, they did not trust me.  They saw no future in computers but Kurt wanted to be a dentist, so they could understand that he had his feet on the ground.  Yet, Kurt went on to poison their daughter, after two children, and live "the life" afterwards.  Yeah, he abandoned the children, my in-laws got to raise them.  Because there was no "proof", no charges were ever filed, but in their town, everyone knows he tried to kill his wife.  She continues to live as a vegetable, at least I think she is still alive.  And then in contrast, there was the German, whom did okay with his career in computers, adopted for four older Russian orphans, continued working with youth for forty years now, etc.  Though they could never accept the idea of "that woman" being in my life, aka Gaelic Girl.

My father in law was proud of me!  But he was conflicted and therefore concerned over his own Christianity.  If he had been so wrong about me, and then Kurt, what else was he wrong about?  Should he have institutionalized his wife, as he had considered early on in their marriage?  (It is a long, horrible story, but she murdered her brother in law, though could not be charged because there never was "proof" she had done it.  Though, she had confessed to me, many years later how she actually had!)  And Dutchman had never told me any of this.  Had he of, I would have flown to be with my father in law, to tell him it was all alright, to pray with him, to let him know I have always loved him!

And so Dutchman, embarrassed and hurting, continued to pace as he spilled his guts over Udie and the words of my father in law.  I think it hurt him to know that it was me and not him, the family finally understood their daughter was to have been with.  He was still hurting from her abandonment of him as she continued on her quest to "know" all of my friends.  Sigh.  He was wanting to know he was forgiven by me, because obviously, he can not forgive himself - even forty years later ...

Though my heart rate is now something like 180 and the alarms are sounding from the nurse's station, I almost had to laugh.  I forgave him even while he was still with my wife four decades earlier!  She was dead to me, the woman I had loved was obviously dead and did not exist any longer, I learned that during my very expensive long distance phone call!  Sure, there is a body with the name of Udie attached to it, but it is not the woman I knew.  And that is what really hurt, no one saw the woman I knew, no actually loved that woman I loved, no one understood her real death, she was just meat in a culture addicted to meat.  Her modelling career fell apart, her life withered and died, and one day in 1983 God told me she finally understood this all and to call for an ambulance in her town, she was committing suicide.  No, she still thinks it a miracle a paramedic kicked in her door, because no one possibly could have known.  She does not understand the power of the Holy Spirit.

And so my almost life long friend, came to his peace in this matter, at the cost of a few thousand heart beats of mine.  He came by last night to visit again, to comment that perhaps GG really does like me, though it would be a hard sell to prove.  But, I was still exhausted and he did not stay long.  So I am hoping he is at peace on this issue. He is my best friend these days, one of the few remaining from the old days.  I hope he has truly come to forgive himself.

So, this post is not so much about what happened to me but the need for those involved to forgive themselves.  A lesson Dutchman is just now learning, a lesson my father in law never understood, a lesson his entire family would do well to learn, actually one most humans should as well.


What was it I wrote to my daughter last fall, following her betrayal of me?
      "The quality of forgiveness, is the quantity by which you have been forgiven ..."

For some it is learning to forgive those whom harm you, for my daughter learning to forgive God for her life, for others learning to forgive themselves.

Forgiveness is needed in this world, Pass It On ...