When you are a little kid you are most vulnerable to the stories that are being told to you by all sorts of relatives and older folks who have access to you like babysitters. Unless they are reading out of a book (and those speak for themselves as purveyors of truth, fiction or fantasy) you again, the child that is, are vulnerable yet still.
When I was a wee one being raised on the south side of Chicago in the Woodlawn neighborhood, soon to be home to the Blackstone Rangers and Jeff Fort, I heard many stories about my family.
One was that my dad had been a boxer and fought under the name of Tiger Thomson. When later in life I asked my Uncle Elmer, my dad's twin brother, was he ever a boxer and Uncle Elmer just laughed and said no he never was.
My dad did walk with a limp and to that I attributed to a fight with a bear that he had had. Again, probably not true.
But the biggest story that requires a little imagination was that my sister was kidnapped and left on the doorsteps of an orphanage and was almost adopted by a family before my parents got wind of it and they in turn sued the orphanage for $100,000. Trust me, if you had that kind of money in the 40's you don't continue to live in the ghetto which is where we were 10 years later before I in fact was sent to an orphanage.
The other part of the kidnapping/$100,000 story was that my dad drank up all the money in the bars up and down 63rd street. Now that part I can believe, if they ever had it in the first place. My dad died of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 52 so to say that my dad could drink a bit is an understatement.
Years later I forgave my dad for the less than emblematic life he gave us. But I want to qualify that forgiveness. My mother would always say she could forgive but she would never forget. And that attitude about forgiveness is widely stated and accepted as the thing to do. Not so, say I. I too was forgiven and I dare say for a good many things that not even my dad had done. Yes, I am talking about Jesus forgiveness. When he died on the cross for our sins, he didn't just die as one taking the rap for them I understand what that is. He took our sins as if they were his own. And we know He was sinless. And when he forgave us our sins he buried them as far as the east is from the west. Yes, he forgot them. I'm going to let you figure that little bit about forgiveness yourself, because it might just take the Holy Spirit to break it down to you for your own satisfaction.
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