heart Talk

Shed the weight travel light!

by ‘Bode Modupe

The number one factor in aging is burdens. Your burdens, or how you carry them, make you old. - Scarlett Bene

Recounting his mother’s last moments in a hospital bed a few years ago, an old classmate said he wondered how his mother survived 17 years of bottled up emotions arising from his father’s momentary departure from home to co-habit with a young single mother. A touching story indeed!

He said that Saturday morning when he walked into the hospital ward to relieve his sister, having just finished his exams the day before, he saw on his mother face an unmistakable tranquility, something he described as a paradox of some sort given her ailing condition.

He said she felt so much at peace that it got him confused thinking that the doctors finally got something right or a miracle had taken place, bringing to an end his mother’s long battle with ovarian cancer.

He felt eager to hear the news, but his sister was in the convenience. There was a look of recognition on his mother’s face unlike his last visit when she remained drowsy from the chemotherapy she had been receiving.

She mumbled something and he moved towards her to hear clearly. She repeated the words, “How are you…” to which he gave an affirmative reply. The words that followed cut him unawares and left him feeling very uneasy for along time.

“I have …forgiven your father… you must forgive him too…’ she said.

They were to be her last words. By the time he was relating this story to me, he was clearly a changed man. His single message to me as I narrated my ordeal was “forgive! Put it behind you and move on, it is the only thing you can do for yourself.’

I have sat down to hear older women lament over the good lives and great careers they sacrificed to support their men only to be paid back with ingratitude and heart aches.

I have heard young women moan over the treachery suffered in relationships vowing never to forgive or forget.

I have heard parents talk about their worthless children wondering how come they have had to visit police stations again and again, while other people’s children bought them cars, built them new houses and gave them tickets to enjoy a holiday abroad.

I have heard children blame their parents for not giving them a proper life and seen regrets etched on the brows of citizens who believe their countries and indeed the leaders have failed them, wondering why they had not seized the opportunities they had earlier in life to compromise the system.

These are men and women who have been offended and bruised along life’s journey and like the picture in John Bunyan’s (Classic) The Pilgrim’s Progress, they carry on them weights and burdens that make the journey uneventful.

How come it gets so difficult to forgive when all that it brings is hurt, ill health and quick gray. Some say it is human to err and divine to forgive, would you rather be limited to the realm of human error or attain the height of the divine?

Is it not so that we can hold down those who have caused us pain and gained from our vulnerability that we now render ourselves victims of our own circumstances?

Shed the weights, travel light- it is an old, aged wisdom! Scientists have continued to provide various reasons why men and women suffer from cancer today, but I hear the most common reason of them all is due to strong negative emotions, that are bottled up over time.

Once my Pastor said to me, “meditate on Psalm 32 verse 1-2,” I really couldn’t understand why because we were talking about a matter in which I believe, I was the offended party.

It says, “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity and in whose spirit there is no guile.”

What makes a man qualify to receive forgiveness than to forgive. It is a lesson that I am still being taught. There is always a starting point.

I read that not all growth are healthy, because cancer grows too. My classmate’s mother learnt that lesson in a hard way but she made the best of it.

Life will be a lot more meaningful if we just learn to let go and let God. I’m sure you heard the preacher say that in the recent past. What we make of it makes life’s journey what it turns out at the end.