My Mother-in-Law passed away in the month of February this year.  She and I had our differences, but I think that the main problem we shared early in our relationship was that we both dearly loved my husband and we both were very strong-willed women.  This combination spelled disaster for our budding relationship (I met my in-laws the day I married my husband) 34 years ago.  I will not go into detail about our “spats” as they are unimportant at this time.  What I will tell you is this:  although she was a strong, southern woman, she set an example for me in forgiveness and grace.  The bottom line is the fact that I did not want my boys to grow up seeing their mother and grandmother at odds, so….. I swallowed my pride, picked up the phone, called my Mother-in-Law and apologized to her for anything and everything I could think of even though I felt she owed me the apology.  She graciously accepted my apology and we began to re-build our relationship from scratch.  That was twenty some-odd years ago…. now she is gone and I miss her dearly.  I am so happy that I picked up the phone that day and swallowed that bitter pill of pride.  Anne became a good friend to me and we bonded very deeply after that.  I feel very blessed to have had her in my life and to have shared a lifetime of events with her.

Sometimes I think about how our lives would have been if I had not made that call.  Would we have stewed in bitterness and despised each other more every day?  I don’t even want to think about how that may have turned out, because bitterness breeds hate; and hate breeds intolerance; and intolerance breeds more bitterness.  It becomes a cancer of the soul…… and then your soul dies because it has no kindness to nourish it.

Love those around you, be kind, be gentle, be patient.