My grandmother on my mother’s side was a true southern lady. She had a certain sense of propriety about the way things were done. She could cook mean collard greens and black-eyed peas. But she also had a saucy side and a bag full of sayings that she would love to pull out, “Y’all eat like birds. Next time I’m making birdseed!” Towards the end of her life when she would have to visit the doctor, she would put on her nicest clothes and make sure that her hair had been done at the hairdresser.
The old lady sitting in my office had a smile missing several teeth and the pearl necklace around her neck was obviously fake, however it was clear that she had put on her best clothes for the visit. She didn’t speak Pidgin, but her eyes lit up when I said hello with the “Kawi” of her local Tok Place. She wrapped me in a tight, encompassing hug taking me back to the ones my grandmother used to give and a feeling I didn’t know that I had missed.
She had been feeling some abdominal pain for a few months and had blood in her stool, something that was becoming increasingly harder to do. Her daughter had brought her in out of concern, a concern that had developed not through the patient’s complaints about her symptoms but out of the daughter’s careful observation of her mother.
As we moved into the ultrasound room and the picture of her illness began to become clear, I began to seek a way to break the news to them. Tears brimmed my eyes as I saw understanding alight in the daughter’s eyes. But as the heaviness settled in the room, it didn’t seem to touch the patient. Even as her daughter explained the cancer that had grown in her pelvis, she reached out to me and her. She was at peace.
Rita comes every Wednesday to clean my house and help me with some of the housework that gets neglected while I am at the hospital. I hadn’t seen her for several weeks because of vacation and a difficulty that had come up in her family. She and her husband had faithfully cared for his mother over the last few months as she navigated one after another health crises. When she passed away the rest of the family became very angry, threatening Rita and her husband with violence and destroying her pineapple garden, the product of lots of time and money and the main source of income to help cover expenses like school fees for the children.
As Rita was telling me the story over our weekly Maggi noodles, I felt myself fuming inside desiring justice to be done. I couldn’t believe that people would act that way and felt my anger ignite. But then Rita stunned me with a simple sentence, “Mi lusim rong bilong ol” or literally I lost their wrongs. She had forgiven those family members who had so unjustly hurt her. And I felt immediately humbled at this lesson in forgiveness and love. Rita showed me what Christ-like forgiveness looked like that day.
Looking through the NY Times pictures from the year, I was struck by the incredible violence and pain across the world. I saw a picture of a number of premature infants being prepared to transfer from a hospital in Gaza to Egypt, and the advent phrase, ‘there was no room for them’ played through my mind.
As we prepare for Christmas this year, in the midst of the brokenness of sin and hate, may the light of Jesus, his redeeming blood and forgiving love, move us to help those around us, to be lights of peace and forgiveness to our needy world. As he came in vulnerability and weakness to us, may we find the strength to choose the way of surrender, the way of our Savior.
