What the Forgiving Did

Because you know me, you know that probably following my God and my family, books are my great love, and I am always telling you about some nugget in something I have read. Today is the nugget from Alexander McCall Smith's new book, La's Orchestra Saves the World. La is a woman, a nickname for Lavender. She attends Cambridge and meets her husband, Richard. They marry, and it becomes apparent that La cannot have children but Richard assures her that they can just build a life together, the two of them. But then it turns out he is having an affair and leaves her. While they are separated and in the process of a divorce, La gets word that Richard has had an accident, and he is actually in a coma, dying. La goes to see him - and as she stands before him, she speaks to him, and I quote from the book now:

"I have come to tell you something," she continued. "Darling. My darling. I have come to tell you that I forgive you. I do." She waited for a response, but what did she expect? Some sign, perhaps, that he had heard, that he understood. But there was nothing . . . She stood up. She thought that she would feel herself transformed . . . There had been no rush of the Holy Spirit, no roaring as of a waterfall, nothing . . . Her words were unheard. But she had bestowed her forgiveness upon him, and as she turned and left the room, she thought: you can be forgiven without knowing it, and for the forgiver it does not matter that the recipient is unaware of what just happened; just as one may be loved by another without ever knowing it."

The forgiving made La free.