Today in the middle of putting away dishes and pouring organic hard red wheat berries into jars from a 50-pound sack, I was thinking many thoughts and feeling a deep grief for a situation. And I remembered a true story that Margaret Jensen wrote in her book about her Norwegian mother, a minister's wife, called First We Have Coffee, one of my all-time favorite books.
It was about a time when Margaret Jensen's mother, now a widow, was gently rocking in her rocker, whispering, "Love and forgive. Love and forgive."
In her lap the Bible was open to the verse, ""When you stand praying, forgive." Mark 11:25.
"But, Bestemor (Grandma), there are some things you can't forgive," her granddaughter insisted. Margaret, standing nearby, knew the granddaughter was in for a story. And sure enough, Bestemor began.
"It happened a long time ago. We'll call the girl Mary and the man John.
Mary was young, filled with dreams of love for her husband John and her love for God and His service. John, restless and impatient in his new pastorate in the farmlands of Wisconsin, longed for the libraries and action of New York City or Chicago, where he had attended seminary. John's brilliant mind craved books. Mary saw beauty in everything: the smell of the freshly plowed fields, the song of a bird, the first signs of spring, crocuses and violets.
Mary had one secret longing: a new dress for spring. Not the somber brown or black, befitting a minister's wife, but a soft voile billowing dress with lace around the neck and sleeves and a big sash.
There was no money. Carefully she laid plans: she would put pennies into a box until there was enough money to buy a new kerosene lamp for John and material for a new dress.
The day came when the new lamp had a place of honor on John's reading table, and the treadle machine had purred as the dress was created.
In a playful mood, Mary pulled down her long brown hair and brushed it in the morning sun. Then she put on her new dress--soft pink voile with violets and lace. A sash tied in the back, and Mary swung around to the delightful squeals of little Louise. It was spring! She was young, just 23, with another new life within her to rock and love. She danced with abandoned joy in her new billowing dress.
With a flash of summer lightning, Mary was whirled around by an angry John, whose storm of frustration unleashed the fury within him.
"Money for foolishness!" he said. "No libraries, no books--no one to talk to about anything except cows and chickens, planting and harvest."
Like a smoldering volcano, John erupted with rage and ripped the dress to shreds.
Just as suddenly the storm was over, and the galloping hoofs of John's horse broke the quiet terror. As he rode into the wind, he unleashed the remainder of his fury on the passing fields and their wide-eyed cows and clucking chickens. He longed to gallop from Wisconsin to the heart of New York City, to his beloved library.
Huddled in a corner, Mary clutched Louise and the shredded dress. Trembling with fear and anger, she remained motionless. Too drained to weep, she was sick with an emptiness and an unutterable longing for her mother in New York. There was no one to turn to in that lonely farmland. Then she remembered Psalm 34:4, "I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears." Then she wept, long and deep, and cried unto the Lord.
Bestemor paused in the story. "Be slow to cry to man, Janice," she said, "but let your cry be unto God." She rocked slowly, then continued.
"Mary set her heart to seek a way of escape. She would make a pallet up in the loft and take Louise to sleep with her. John would sleep alone. Then she folded the shredded dress in a small package and hid it in her trunk. Pastor Hansen was coming to visit the rural churches, and Mary decided to bide her time, to quietly wait and show the dress to Pastor Hansen, then ask for assistance to leave John and return to New York.
With quiet determination, she put on her dark dress and combed her long brown hair into a severe knot, befitting a minister's wife.
When John returned late in the night, he ate the supper from the warming oven and looked for Mary. When he found her in the loft, he ordered her back to their bed and put Louise in her crib. Mary gently tucked Louise in her crib and obediently went to bed. John's storm had passed, but he was unaware of the debris in its wake.
Life went on as usual, but the song was gone and Mary's steps were weighted with bitterness. She quietly waited and thought out her plans.
The final service of Pastor Hanson's time was drawing to a close. But he was preaching from Mark 11:25, "When ye stand praying, forgive."
Forgiveness is not optional, he said, but a command. It is not a feeling but an act of faith, a definite act of the will to forgive in obedience to God's command. The feeling comes later, the feeling of peace. When we offer to God our hurts and despair, God will pour His love and compassion into the wounds, and His healing will come.
"Oh, no!" Mary cried inside. "I can't forgive, and I can never forget!"
The sermon continued, "Someone may be thinking, 'I can never forget, even if I could forgive.' You are right, you can't forget, but you needn't be devastated by remembering. God's love and His forgiveness can and will cushion the memory until the imprint is gone. When you forgive, you must destroy the evidence, and remember only to love."
The sermon closed with reciting together the Lord's Prayer, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."
While John and Pastor Hansen rode home with Deacon Olsen, on the way home in her own buggy, Mary's scalding tears poured.
At home, she knew what she must do. She would obey God. Without waiting to unhitch Dolly, she fled from the buggy and placed sleeping Louise in her crib. With trembling hands she took out of the trunk the package with the torn dress, the package she had wanted to show Pastor Hansen.
But she couldn't let go. She poked the fire and added more wood. She put on the coffee pot and set the table.
"The evidence must go," rang in her memory.
"I forgive you John," she whispered.
Finally she picked up the tattered dress with one hand, and the stove lid with the other. Tears splashed on the fire and the dress burned slowly.
"True forgiveness destroys the evidence" pounded so loudly in her heart that she failed to hear John's footsteps.
"Mary, what are you doing?"
Trembling with sobs, she said, "I am destroying the evidence."
To herself, she added, "My offering to God."
Then John remembered!
Pale and shaken, he murmured, "Please forgive me."
Bestemor rocked quietly.
"Please, grandmother, what happened?" Jan begged.
Bestemor waited. Her eyes followed the ducks on the lake, but her heart was somewhere else. Softly she continued, "Now John has gone home. Fifty-eight years together, and I miss him."
Wide-eyed with understanding, Jan wrapped her arms around her beloved Bestemor.
"That was you and Grandfather!"
The chair rocked slowly in the quiet room as Bestemor's loving hand stroked the bowed head.
A few days later, Bestemor had a dream. Three angels appeared to her and said, "Come, we are going to a celebration!"
And over the arm of one angel was draped a beautiful dress.
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