Eight Thousand Songs of Forgiveness

When Fanny Crosby was six weeks old, a well-meaning country doctor made a devastating mistake. Treating her inflamed eyes with warm mustard poultices, he permanently destroyed her sight. The doctor, reportedly overcome with guilt, never fully recovered from the weight of what he had done.

Fanny could have let that darkness define her twice — once in her eyes, once in her heart. Instead, she chose a different path. She forgave him completely. More than that, she came to see her blindness not as something to resent, but as a gift that turned her attention inward — toward music, prayer, and the quiet voice of God.

What followed was one of the most prolific creative lives in church history. Fanny Crosby wrote more than eight thousand hymns — Blessed Assurance, Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior, To God Be the Glory — songs that have carried the faithful through grief, loss, and everything between. Congregations around the world still sing her words every Sunday morning, often not knowing they come from a woman who had every reason to be bitter but chose to be thankful instead.

There is something quietly stunning in that arithmetic. One act of forgiveness. Eight thousand songs of praise.

When we release those who have wounded us, we do not only free them — we free ourselves. Bitterness closes the door. Forgiveness, as Fanny Crosby somehow understood, opens it wide. What might be waiting on the other side of your hardest pardon?