holding on to bitterness

The weather had begun to warm as Spring was turning into summer. I was 7 months pregnant and already feeling the strain of my 3rd pregnancy. It’s really amazing what 2 years difference can make you feel when you become pregnant again. I was in the kitchen cooking while trying to keep cool and trying to keep 2 little boys entertained while scrambling to get dinner on the table before their daddy got home.

There was an unexpected knock at the door. As I peeked through the side window I saw my mother-in-law there. I hadn’t seen her in a year or more and I didn’t even know if she knew I was pregnant, let alone with the very first girl of the family. She has never shown up like this before.

I, reluctantly, opened the door and she opened her mouth and I shut down my heart. She was hurtful and mean and I was pregnant and hormonal. She was hurt and didn’t know how to convey her feelings because of her foreign tongue and foreign culture.  I came in and swooped her little boy away and he’d created his own family and while he didn’t leave her alone completely, she’d felt like he did. I was the easiest target and she was hurt. But, defensive and protective me didn’t see it that way.

After that day in late May, my heart had been done. I’d tried for so long to get her to like me; to have her approve of me and it just wasn’t going to work out. Bitterness was having it’s way with my heart, growing and festering and I sat there and let it control me, making excuses and not addressing the hurt that had happened in the both of us.

The weather had began to cool and it looked like rain was coming in and it was a Saturday afternoon, some 4 years later. Andre was excitedly preparing for his baptism and I was collecting the kids and getting them bathed for church after they’d played outside all day. The phone rang unexpectedly and she was there with the most hopeful tone in her voice asking me what time we were leaving to church and if she could come along with us to see her grandson be baptized. Of course, I said, as the slightest of smiles crept across my face and a tear sprang to my eye. Of course.

We walked into church and she was amazed at how friendly everyone was (and how many people had actually stopped to say hello to her and tell her how happy they were that she had come). We dropped the kids off to their rooms and found a seat in the worship room. The band began to play and a smile took over her tired, well-worn face. Tears sprang to her eye as she thanked God and praised Him for that moment. She whispered to me that she wished her own church played as well and as loud as ours did. I chuckled at the thought of this 70 year old Korean woman praising Him with abandon to loud contemporary worship music.

The bitterness that I’d held onto for so long in the beginning years of my marriage is weakening everyday. There are so many moments that she missed and so many that the kids missed and so many moments that I hoped they would have had. I struggled with the expectations that she needed to be more like my family, that she needed to be warm and welcoming and loving. I somehow required that of her. She had just wanted to be a part of our family and felt as though we were leaving her out. I didn’t give her the chance to be any of those things because I mistook her pain and hurt for something that it was not. Today, I’m not holding on to bitterness. Today, I’m letting it go.

“If we don’t let go of the grudge we hold so tightly in our closed hands, our hands aren’t open to receive anything from God.”