A Life Filled With Grace

[labug]

I am fascinated by forgiveness because even tho I learned about forgiveness at church many years ago, it was never something I saw practiced in my home. My mom was more of a "one strike" person-no way did we get 3.

We also didn't forgive others, the world was pretty much divided into 2 categories: good and bad. We liked the good people (until they did something to rate their fall to the bad category), we didn't like the bad people. Bad people never got rated up.

If I was "good" I got love, if I wasn't, I didn't.

When I first started seeing my IC, I sheepishly told her of my guilty pleasure-the TV show Intervention. I was fascinated by the notion that the families of the addicts, even after all the pain and heartache caused by the addiction, could still love. Yes, there is much more involved in the process but that's the part that kept me watching. Was that level of forgiveness really possible? Do people really do that? Can love be that big?

I found a blog last week that also fascinates me. The way I found it was so random-I was listening to a comedian on the radio who was talking about his FIL who is in prison in Texas for attempted murder and I thought "what a unusual thing to use in a comedy act" and had to find out the back story.

Through the power of google, I found that it's a true story and that the comedian's wife is a story-teller, writer and PR person for comedians. She has a blog and I began reading because there again was that concept of forgiveness. How do you forgive and have a R with someone who has attempted to take the life of another human being?

Her story is much bigger than having a father in prison for attempted murder, as we might guess. Both her parents are deaf. I have a brother who is deaf, another connection. I know that deaf children often face terrible bullying, even more so in the era when this father was growing up in small town Texas. How did that shape his future?

In her childhood there was abuse, neglect, abject poverty but she is working on forgiveness and creating a life that is full of laughter and light. I'm fascinated. Can love really be that big?

She has a book "Burn Down the Ground" which I've requested from the library.

I'm just now beginning to recognize the power of forgiveness in my life. I need all the role models I can find.