My younger daughter and her husband had just finished putting the finishing touches on the sale of their condominium in Los Angeles which they had rented out for a number of years. With their four young children of ages one through seven, they now quickly packed for the trip to the Big Island of Hawaii to join my wife, myself and her older sister and new husband of one year arriving with our eleven year old granddaughter. My older daughter and husband had just moved into their new home in Atlanta after renting her townhouse; they had hardly enough time to prepare for the trip to the big island preceded by a stay with us in Honolulu for a few days.
It was my hope that having sufficiently recuperated from my surgery to repair an aneurysm in my left leg, I would be strong enough to be able to take my granddaughter for a walk in the neighborhood as we had done many times before on previous visits, but the full healing process had not yet taken place so that her Stepdad along with her Mom took her on walks of 10 or 15 min. My limit was about 1 minute and perhaps 100 or so feet before I had to rest; It was a bit disappointing to me. However, seeing her roughhousing with her Stepdad, which I realized I could no longer do myself as I had before, brought me joy and happiness to realize she was in a normal family setting; her Mom and she have been going through hard times with a narcissistic and vengeful ex-husband.
My wife had been concerned that when they arrived they would just take off and do whatever they wanted without planning things with us first. That did not happen and I made sure that they understood to always ask my wife what she might want to do. I was content to rest at home while the little family went to the beach each day and then took walks. My wife has been setting up, with a couple of real estate friends, their own real estate company so that had taken up a lot of her time; she was content to just go to dinner with my daughter’s family and I was able to go along too. During one of these times at a restaurant my daughter expressed a lot of anger with her younger sister who had seemingly not expressed an interest in communicating with her older sibling and had expressed some things that were taken as being unfriendly. She also expressed resentment that her younger sister’s husband had not even acknowledged or conversed with her new husband.
Prayer seemed to me the only remedy in this case; misunderstandings in a family when dealt with through anger can destroy the harmony that ought to be present. I had visions of a possible worst case scenario where both families would do their own thing after squabbling and my wife would be very upset.
We checked into one of two townhouses side-by-side, we with our older daughter’s family arriving a bit earlier taking one of the townhouses and our younger daughter’s family arriving later taking the other. After a good night’s sleep, to my great happiness, early in the morning both of our young families went together to the local pool and had a good time swimming as my wife and I slept a little longer. This was Thanksgiving day 2013. Next we all went together to a nearby shopping area to pick up a turkey ordered along with all the usual accoutrements like stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes vegetables, etc. We got a number of other things to supply our needs for the rest of the weekend we had planned.
We all came back to the townhouse, my wife and I were residing in, to prepare the dinner. After some lunch everyone proceeded to chip in with lots of merriment and friendliness and cooperation. All enjoyed each other’s company and even the two young husbands actually conversed with each other quite often; Amazing Grace. There was no anger expressed, no resentment expressed; just good clean fun and good cooperative work to bring about a meal that everyone enjoyed. The kids had fun playing games (and watching TV). As usual I was given the job of saying Grace; in doing so I asked for the usual blessing of God on all of us and the food but felt I wanted to thank God for the grace that He had showered upon us to exhibit nothing but His peace working in all of us that day; I felt the tears rushing to my eyes in thanksgiving and could say no more. We all just said Amen.
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