"I focus on this one thing: forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead." Philippians 3:13.
Exactly 10 days ago my Grandmother Lena passed away. I can honestly say that although I loved her dearly, I never really knew her. Something happened to Grandma that changed her life and personality forever.
On a crisp March morning in 1942 my Grandmother walked out of the front door of her tiny two room house to go and draw some drinking water from her neighbors well. She quickly assessed the situation and decided to leave her three children, all under the age of 5, at home. There was just no way that she could possibly manage to control the hyper 5 year old, while carrying the 2 year old on one hip, and still hold the sleeping 6 month old, and still have a hand left over to carry buckets of water down the steep hill. She concluded that the trip on foot would take less than ten minutes and she'd be right back.
Grandma had no sooner gotten the water when she heard shouts from passersby warning that a house was on fire! Call it a mothers intuition, or simply call it a knowing, but Grandma knew immediately that it was her house that was up in flames and she also knew that her three babies were still trapped on the inside. Next, she dropped her buckets of water and immediately ran with bare feet up the rocky incline to what once had been her house. Unfortunately, it was too late, the fire was out of control and the children could not be rescued.
No mother should ever go through what my Grandmother went through. I'm sure that the pain that she felt and tears that she cried were innumerable. But the biggest tragedy of all; was that Grandma stayed trapped in the past and never got on with the future. She stayed a prisoner of her pain and she built a wall around her heart and she never allowed anyone inside, not even God. She never spoke of the fire or the deaths of her children unless someone forced her to, and that someone was always me. I can tell you that when she did speak of the fire she'd get very uncomfortable. Her eyes would start to dart around the room and she would look at everything but my face. I understood that the experience was very painful for her and that's why I wanted her to talk about it.
I wish that I could say that Grandma used her pain to comfort others, but she didn't. I would love to tell you that she completely let go of the past and trusted God in the last days of her life, but she didn't.
When I walked into the funeral home 6 days ago: my first thought was that time had ran out. She had no more tomorrows to live. No more chances to laugh, had no more opportunities to forgive and forget, or be a blessing to someone else. There were no more chances to reach out to other hurting mothers who may have lost children. The truth is; unlimited potential died with Grandma. She could have absolutely rocked this world with her experiences and wisdom, but instead it all stayed locked inside and was buried with her.
Believe it or not, I've learned more from Grandma's death then I did from her life.
In my last couple of blog posts I've complained how that being raised as one of Jehovah's Witnesses has prevented me from fully trusting others and therefore I concluded that because I couldn't trust others, than I couldn't trust God completely. Why it's been so easy for me to blame God for everything that has happened to me in my past I'll never know. Why I would count all other people as untrustworthy just because I was mistreated by one religious group no longer makes any sense.
Take the advice of someone who has had to learn a hard lesson; if you want any kind of successful future, you must close and lock the door on the past. Then you must determine to fix you focus on what lies ahead in the future. At long last I've learned that my past did not keep me from my future, I did. I'm the one who determines whether I control my past, or my past controls me.
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