when i awakened this morning and went into the great room of our home, i looked at the beautiful christmas lights and decorations that surrounded me, and i thought of a relative of my wife's who finds no joy in christmas or any other time of the year. i knew then that i wanted to write about my feelings toward her and how to change myself to see her differently.
this woman (i'll call her "j") is filled with bitterness and anger. she finds it impossible to get along with anyone, including her husband and daughter. j is suspicious of all who show her kindness, attributing their good intentions to a desire to take advantage of her in some way. everywhere she has lived, she has made enemies of her neighbors. my wife used to call j to try and keep up some sort of relationship with her, but every call turned into a disagreement, and j frequently ended the call abruptly and hung up. finally my wife decided that trying to maintain the relationship was not worth the pain it caused.
just a couple of weeks ago, we discovered through another relative (j's sister"k") that j has moved with her husband, who is quite ill and over ninety years old, to the pacific northwest where j's daughter and grandchildren had moved. k had called to check on j and asked j the name of the suburban town to which she was moving. j claimed she couldn't recall the name of the town, much less her new address. k had to contact j's daughter to find out the information and share it with the rest of the family.
my wife decided that she would not initiate any contact with j, but leave it to her to contact us, since it appears that j doesn't want other family members to know what is going on in her life. my wife was deeply hurt that this relative would make such a move and fail to inform the family of her contact information.
as i sit here, i think of how sad j's life must be. she hates her husband, has a strained relationship with her daughter, and finds reasons to alienate her neighbors wherever she lives. she believes that everyone is out to get her, that all who are kind to her are only trying to take advantage of her in some way. i'm trying to open my heart to her and to imagine her as a small, mistreated child. in the family, we know that her father was physically and emotionally abusive to her and her siblings and that her childhood was a misery. we know that her first husband, though not physically abusive, was self-centered and controlling, offering her almost no emotional support. as i think about that relationship, i try to imagine how awful life must have been for her, having gone from an abusive father to a husband that was little better.
i can't walk in her shoes, but i can try to picture her as a frightened child and unloved wife. every male figure in her life injured her. her present husband holds her captive by his illness, and she is now little more than his servant and care-giver. she has been forced to give up the things she loves to do to care for him. she had an outlet through the music program in her church, where she sang in the choir, played in the church orchestra, and had begun violin lessons. his illness ended all that. now she is more bitter and angry than ever. i can do little to help her, but i can try to understand how she has come to be the person she is and have compassion for her.
may she see the harm she does herself and others. may we see how easy it would be to become like her if we had experienced the pain she has suffered. may we realize that there are many who are suffering just as j is and help them in any way we can. may we love without condition and, at the same time, may we accept that we can't solve another's problems for them. shalom.
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