Pride

I told you how I went to see my grandma (my dad's mom) on Saturday. Something came up in the conversation that I can't get off my mind.

Right after my dad died, his best friend and his coworkers at UPS got together and raised money for my sisters and me.  (I mentioned this a long time ago, in this post.)  Randomly, my grandma mentioned that we need to call him and ask for that money because he's saving it until we call and ask for it.  My mom and I tried convincing her that we've talked to him many, many times in the past ten years, and we still haven't gotten the money that we should have had from day one.  My grandma and he are divorced, and after all the lies he's told her in the past 50 years, she still honestly believes that he's held on to that money.

I don't buy it.  Neither does my mom.  He spent that money the day he got it.  I just know it in my gut.  He just wants an excuse to get credit, the same way he was when he waited five years to send us the original copies of the letters my dad wrote us before he died.  He had nothing to do with those letters, and he still kept them from us, just like he hid this money.

My mom told me something on the car ride home from that visit, when we were still fuming about what my grandma said.  She said that at my dad's funeral, he told us, "Children are resilient.  You'll be fine.  You can't imagine the pain I'm in."  Who says that to three young kids who just lost their father?  And now my grandma expects us to go to him and kiss up so we can get money that is ours?  No way.

Yes, I have too much pride.  I will be on welfare before I go crawling to him for that money, and my mom and Holly are the same way.  Chelsea, on the other hand, actually agreed to call him.  She thinks she can make him feel guilty.  My mom, who knows him much better than we do, told her, "You can't make a man with an ice-cold heart, incapable of remorse, feel guilty." 

Yes, I probably should forgive him.  But I'm not there yet.  I don't even think he wants forgiveness.  My cousins on my dad's side don't understand why we honestly hate him.  But that's because we're expected to keep quiet about the horrible things he's said and done to us over the past 10 years.  Like the time he beat Holly.  Or the times when he told my mom that she was a horrible mother because she didn't take my sisters and me to see my dad in the hospital, when that was a decision that she and my dad made together.  Or when his new wife (number 4) would smoke in the car with the windows rolled up, even after we told her about my bad asthma.

My cousin, Melissa, had a baby last February.  I still haven't met him, because she hates us.  At my dad's funeral, she got all the attention like she was the daughter (this is the one thing I remember), while we sat off to the side barely getting noticed.  His wife and children were barely noticed.  How screwed up is that?  Yes, one of my dad's brothers and his wife, Mark and Heather, have come around and talk to us, but not my "uncle" Mike and "aunt" Cindy.  And it used to hurt.  But now I just don't care anymore.  We didn't deserve to be ostracized like this. 

God, I ask you to please change me.  Change my heart and rid it of the resentment, hurt and anger I hold.  Open my grandfather's heart to treat us like his grandchildren again.  Help me be okay with the situation, even if I never hear from him again.  I know that anger does not honor You, and I long to give forgiveness in the way that Your Son did.  Amen.