Day's Diary

July 14, 2007 ~ Alinafe's Choice

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Alinafe’s Choice

Alinafe has told me about her home life before, so knew some of the details, but after the Sunday of family visits, I asked a few more questions, to be certain that I remembered things correctly. I was impressed with the spiritual maturity of this young woman who has adopted me.

Alinafe is the oldest of three sisters who are close in age. Her parents had a troubled marriage and her mother came and went. When she was seven, her mother and father divorced and she and her sisters were left with father, who quickly remarried. Her step mother resented the girls and resented any money spent on them. When she had her first child, things became even worse. Alinafe said that she was not allowed to ask her father for anything. If she had a need, she had to meet him on his way to work and he would leave money with her grandparents, his parents, and they would give her the money or get the thing that she needed. He made it clear that her stepmother was never to know about the things he did for her. When she was eleven, the hostility was so intense that she was physically sick much of the time. Her grandparents agreed that she could come to live with them. Her father continued to pay her school fees for a while, but even that became an issue and he explained that it was not going to be possible any longer. She would have to provide for herself. Her grandparents agreed to pay in exchange for work she would do around the house, so she worked doing cooking, cleaning, shopping and laundry to earn her school fees. After she finished our equivalent of high school, she took a year off to work full time so she could make the money to do a program in accounting. She paid for all of that on her own.

During this time, her resentment of her stepmother was growing. She knew that her father was successful in business and could have afforded to pay for all of his children, but her stepmother would not allow that. Her contact with her father was minimal, since her stepmother did not want her around her children. Alinafe said she began to hate her stepmother. She blamed her for all the difficulties in her life. When her father became ill she was not allowed to visit him. Her grandparents would go to visit and take messages to him from her. That was her only communication with him. Then he died. She attended the funeral, but with the understanding that she was not to stand with the family at the gravesite. She didn’t but this only fed her resentment. Soon after his death, her stepmother moved back to her village, cutting off all communication with any of the family.

Shortly after that Charles and Alinafe became serious about their relationship and began to talk about marriage. In a conversation they had about family and the wedding, Charles said that he felt she needed to forgive her stepmother and let there be peace. He felt that her feelings for her stepmother were affecting her spiritual growth. She began to pray about that and then she heard a sermon on the same topic of forgiveness and she decided that God was really speaking to her. She made up her mind that she would forgive her stepmother, regardless of her stepmother’s response to her. She went to her stepmother and asked for forgiveness for her own actions, too. Her stepmother’s response was cold. Alinafe decided that she needed to act as a loving daughter, even if that was not how she felt or how she was received. She needed to live out the forgiveness in what she thought and did.

The opportunity to put that decision to the test came sooner than she expected. Her father’s will was contested by some of his business partners and the case was decided in their favor. That left her stepmother with very little money, but she had enough to live on, until she got sick. The doctor’s visits and hospitalization took up most of what she had and she wasn’t making anything to add to it. Once she was hospitalized, she had no one to come and care for her and that is a difficult thing in Malawi, since family members are the ones who prepare food for the patients. When Alinafe learned she was in the hospital, she went to Blantyre to see her and see what she could do to help her. She and Charles made the trip and left her money to buy food, although they were not able to be there to cook for her. This was money out of their small living allowance. Alinafe has been going to Blantyre every other week to check on her and she calls her regularly. When we were at Mlombwa Church, we went to visit her stepmother in the hospital and Alinafe left her a bit of money for food and other needs. Her stepmother is willingly accepting the help and the offer of friendship. Alinafe said she is grateful for the choice she has made to forgive and love, regardless of the response. She is freed now in a way that she never felt before, freed from the past and freed from the hurt of the past.