What Mammaw Said - It’s Comin’ Up A Cloud

What Mammaw Said - It’s Comin’ Up a Cloud

Forgiving is required when excusing or condoning or tolerating or accepting are not big enough to do the job. —John Ortberg

MAMMAW LOVED the weather. She’d get worked up over any minor change, but nothing got her attention like an evening spring thunderstorm approaching from the northwest. She’d stand on her front porch, hands on her hips, feeling the wind shift and say, “Ellen, run home quick and get your parents; it’s comin’ up a cloud.”

We lived about seventy-five yards to the south, so I’d trot my short fat little legs home and get my parents. Mammaw would pick up the phone. (We had a party line—know what that is? Telco purgatory to a teenager.) She’d call my aunt, who would bring my three cousins from across the street to join us in the storm cellar. It was stinky, dark, and damp—so she’d light the kerosene lamp and there together, huddled up close, we’d ride out the storm. Telling stories. Singing hymns. Laughing. Together. As a family.

Mammaw’s family was far from perfect; both her son and daughter had issues. But regardless, Mammaw knew one thing for sure: no matter the problems we faced as a family—sometimes caused by circumstances, sometimes created by poor choices—when life’s storms come, and they will, it’s far better to ride out the weather with your family, than alone. Mammaw’s own children would sometimes do or say things that she couldn’t condone. They made some choices she couldn’t accept.

Because Mammaw couldn’t tolerate or accept some of their decisions, she was left with forgiving them. I saw firsthand what unconditional love looks like—by a kerosene lamp in a cold, dark storm cellar.

Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. We love each other because he loved us first. (1 John 4:18-19)

Girlfriends, it’s comin’ up a cloud. Get over the hurt feelings and call the fam. Let your family’s legacy begin with forgiveness.