The Forgiving Heart of a Child

How could she, should I call for a manager must I complain. How could she, even after I had apologized, for goodness sakes! I didn’t know, she didn’t need to be so rude. Isn’t it her job, I mean technically I made it there on time, I deserve to be served it’s her job isn’t she supposed to put the patient/customer first. Don’t they take some type of oath that puts customers first and their needs first? She surely doesn’t know her job.
That was my mind in a monologue as I tried to reason out what had just happened. It was painfully annoying. Then I remembered that little girl on the train earlier on in the morning and how humbling and heart warming what she did was. You can’t forgive until you have forgiven like a little child. In that moment all my complaints halted. I’ll begin by recounting the events of the morning.

On the train this morning, I witnessed something heart warming. I observed a group of 6 people who boarded the train in the same place I got on. I could tell they were together because when we got on the train, two of them tried to get everyone in the party to sit together. It appeared they were a Latino family; a middle aged man, a middle aged woman, three daughters and a little girl who I presumed was a granddaughter or what I thought was a daughter to one of the daughters. I was catching up on my game of “words with friends” on my phone when I noticed something that made me say whoa! The little girl was crying for some reason and one the ladies who I’m sure is her mother, struck her on the thigh out of frustration while yelling something in Spanish and sort of threw her in her baby carriage and buckled her in angrily and hurriedly. Needless to say the little girl was crying loudly at this point and no one was consoling her. I was personally quite shocked since I had never seen anyone in this country do that to her child. I’m all for disciplining children but believe it or not that wasn’t the heartwarming part of the story

Minutes later, the little girls mother put some lip gloss on her lips and had pouted her lips ready to kiss the little angel on her lips. And even though her aunt appeared to be telling her not to kiss her mother because she had minutes ago struck her, she went ahead and puckered up and kissed her mother. In moments the tears had turned to smiles and she was no longer crying. Just like that, it seemed like she had forgotten that it was this same woman who had angrily struck her so harshly. That didn’t matter anymore because that was all in the past.

I learned two possible reasons why children may find it so easy to forgive and perhaps why we need to have that childlike demeanor in order to forgive

1.Children forgive because they have no choice

That little girl had no choice, what was she going to do holding a grudge against her mother. Was she going to boycott eating because her mother struck her? I mean she could but what would that make her, very hungry. Simply, a child who chooses not to forgive signs her death certificate and is simply saying “leave me alone, I want to die”. Children need adult nurture love and care to grow and that simply means they must continually forgive the adults who hurt them if they want that love and care. Which leads me to the second point about why children need to forgive.

2.Children forgive because they are vulnerable

Children are born into the world and will not survive a day in the world without another human beings help. In other words, children are frail, vulnerable creatures whose chances of survival are next to nothing without an adult of sorts guiding, providing and protecting. A simple cost and benefit analysis will reveal that forgiveness one of the easiest thing a vulnerable creature like that could do in order to survive.

Fast-forward to me getting off the train and walking to my destination. I was going to get blood drawn for a physical but unfortunately I didn’t know the hours of operation of this center and I walked in at 12:28 pm. As I walked in there was nobody in the waiting room but I heard movement in the back so I said “Hello, Hello” then there was movement towards me, I saw a middle aged black woman walking towards me mumbling audibly, “You’ve gotta be kidding! You’ve gotta be kidding right? You people have no consideration of other people’s time” Mind you I had no idea what she meant and as she walked towards me I felt like she was going to attack me for something and I had 5 seconds to figure out why and act appropriately to save my life.

She snatched the requisition from my hand and as she did so I looked around and that’s when I saw the sign that said they close at 12:30pm on Saturdays. As she unfolded the requisition, she yelled “If it’s a lot of tests I’m not going to do it” Realizing what was going on and understanding her feelings perfectly, I proceeded to apologize. I told her I was really sorry and that I was unaware of their hours and that I probably should have checked before making my way over there. She took no notice of what I was saying and even if she did made no effort to acknowledge the apology. It seemed to me that to her, I had committed the most unpardonable crime. I kept apologizing hoping to at least hear an acknowledgement of my apology but they fell on deaf ears. She harshly instructed me to go to the room and as she prepared to make the draws kept mumbling inaudibly seemingly abrasive and harsh complaints.

I am usually quick to accept when I’m wrong and very apologetic. Most people who know me think “I’m sorry” is my national anthem I don’t take too much too seriously but when a sincere apology falls on deaf ears like it did on this particular occasion I realize that it starts to raise righteous indignation to exponential degrees in my heart. Fortunately, the other phlebotomist who was in the back saw what was going on and told the angry lady that she would do the draws for me. So long story short, the other lady, who happened to be a younger Asian woman did the draws and I walked out once again, apologizing for not knowing their hours of operation.

As I walked out, I started replaying the incident in my head and I got more and more upset about it as I did so. What else was I supposed to do when I honestly didn’t know? Of course it may seem intentional and unfair to the workers to come in 2 minutes before closing time but in my life’s experience of thinking the worst of people I have come to realize that nobody in their right mind will walk in 2 minutes before closing intentionally to piss people off. And even so on the basis of technicality 12/28 and is not 12:30 and since I came before closing time they can’t refuse me service. What’s more I thought most people who enter the medical field do it because as the cliché goes “they want to help people” or maybe I thought wrong. I was getting angry and was thinking of ways to mollify my indignation because I felt I was right. Then as I got closer to the train I remembered what I had seen on the train that morning. The lesson that came with watching a child forgive and forget as it were in minutes and at the drop of a hat what an adult would have found hard to do.

Right then I I learned why we find it hard to forgive as we grow. I learned that not forgiving is a choice we make because we can. As we grow and gradually make the transition from vulnerable childhood to adulthood and learn to be self reliant and not other dependent we assume the arrogant role of choosing to not forgive. So that forgiveness an erstwhile compulsion and necessity becomes a mere choice.

As I mulled these things in my heart I realized that it really isn’t that serious after all; that I didn’t need to be angry about the events at all and more importantly that as a person who believed in a God of forgiveness who was willing to stake so much for my sake that I must like a child practice forgiveness as a necessity and not as an option. I feel like what we, as humans do through life is that we begin as innocent children and fight tooth and nail to lose that innocence. And once we have lost that innocence, we spend all our adulthood trying to regain that lost innocence. Sadly that is what it seems. Life cannot be life if there’s nothing bigger than us. As children we had adult hands to bear us as adults we need something bigger.