Forgiveness

This is a story of forgiveness and the importance of it, especially for those of us who call ourselves Christians. I am sure that many of you struggle with forgiveness like I did for a long time. I want to tell you my personal journey of forgiveness with my parents, my mother mostly, and how it changed my life and the blessings that I received from God afterward. This is going to be long, so if you don't want to read it feel free to listen to me talk about it on my podcast Just A Dude with a Mic on Anchor at https://anchor.fm/justadudewithamic when it becomes available. It is not currently available and will update this once it is available (updated Oct 11, 2021). For those willing to read it all let's go.

To the best of my knowledge, I cannot recall a single peaceful time from my parents’ marriage. Whenever I try to think back to my childhood, the majority of what I remember is my parents fighting with each other and the resulting scenarios. When I say my parents fought, I mean there were many times my mother attacked my father, clawing at his neck and drawing blood. My brothers and I would be ripped from our beds at random times throughout the night by one parent or the other and taken…..somewhere. Sometimes it was our aunt and uncles house, other times it was my grandparents, other times it was one of my mom’s random alcoholic friend’s houses we stayed at. We would stay there for a day or three, it would depend on how long it took the family to calm my parents down and get them back together. My parents continued to play this stupid little game with us until a couple of days before my 9^th birthday when my mom took us to one of her alcoholic friends’ places and then filed for divorce and a restraining order against my father, on my birthday. Oh, and she tried to have my father arrested for having my half-sister and grandmother come by with a couple of birthday gifts for me. This is when everything really got bad.

Before the divorce was even final my mother had her new boyfriend move his trailer onto our property and live there. She began to drink herself blackout drunk every single night, and her boyfriend began to abuse me. The abuse started small, mainly he would push me a lot when he was drunk. Eventually the pushing became arm punches, then became stomach punches and eventually hitting me in the head with a cast iron skillet to “test how hard my head was”. I always laughed it off, because I was a child and had no idea how to process an adult physically hurting me, so I processed it like it was just a game. This was the first time I ever learned to hide not only physical pain, but emotional pain too, this was the first mask of many masks that I would create in order to protect myself. From the ages of 9 until 15 I lived with my mother and her abusive boyfriend…because Washington is a mommy state. During this time my brothers and I survived off diet of frozen pizza and frozen dinners. My mother spent all of her free time drinking away the child support at the bar with her loser friends. She would come home blackout drunk and I would stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning to make sure she got into bed. These late nights is why I was abused and my brothers weren’t. I didn’t mind this much because my brothers weren’t being harmed, and I was too afraid to say anything. This was because of the fear I had of the man, he would claim that he killed people as a biker back in the day and had tattoos and injuries that made me believe him. I was afraid he would kill me and my family if I said anything. During this time, I began to smoke cigarettes in the 3^rd grade, I tried weed for the first time in the 6^th grade and was drinking by 7^th grade. I just wanted to drown my sorrows and my pain, I just wanted to escape all of the shame that I felt on a daily basis. But I couldn’t show anyone, so I created more and more masks. I would be the funny guy, I would be a rock for others, I would be a protector for others and so on. I created so many masks I didn’t actually know who I was or what I believed in; this would continue into adulthood.

Now, you might be asking yourself, where was my dad in all of this. Well, he was there, but due to the massive amount of pain medication he was on kept him pretty drugged up. That was until I was 15 and told him I wanted to move in with him, and I could make that decision now that I was 15. Life was a little better from 15 until I graduated. My dad got his meds under control, and I no longer had to deal with the abuse of my mom’s boyfriend, or the neglect of my mother. However, I still had to deal with my mom’s crap. During this time, she attempted suicide several times, blaming me for several of them for convincing my brothers to go against her…. of course, it couldn’t have been the fact she was a trash mother.  Throughout high school I used drugs and alcohol to cover the pain from my past that I couldn’t seem to just forget.

During high school I met my now wife, and that made the pain a little better, but it was always there. I joined the Army and left for Basic Training 3 days after I graduated. I thought that if I got away from everything I could finally find escape from my pain, that I could finally be who I was meant to be. However, this didn’t happen, since I never dealt with my issues I just created more masks, and then ended up piling trauma from my service onto the heap…..great idea right? During my deployment my father died only a week after I came home from mid tour leave to get married. I left the Army in 2012 and things just got worse. I continued to hide my pain with marijuana and alcohol, I became more and more irritable and was destroying my own family. I finally got help in the spring of 2018 and was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, a Panic Disorder, Imposter Syndrome, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Depression and PTSD. Dr Belle broke through all of my walls and helped me destroy all the masks I had created over the years. She helped me to understand my emotions and to facilitate them appropriately. She helped me forgive my father and most important she helped me forgive myself. Through this I began to be truthful with my family about what happened in my childhood. I was scared that they wouldn’t believe me, but I was so wrong. I was met with nothing but love and compassion from my Aunt and Uncle and my grandparents while on vacation. It was so freeing, but during this trip something happened. My mom had overdosed on her medications again and it seemed like this time she was going to die. Instantly I was enraged, instantly I was that angry little boy again. I hated my mother for ruining this trip and I hated that I didn’t seem to be over all of this anger.

Alone in my hotel room I began to scream and cry at God, I began to blame Him for the bad in my life and the pain I still feel. I blamed Him for not taking away my pain even though I asked him to. In the moment God spoke to me, really for the first time in my life. He made it clear that because I still held hatred and unforgiveness against my mother, God couldn’t truly take my pain away, because that would go against His word.

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses..  Matthew 6: 14-15 ESV

That was the scripture brought to my mind. All it did, was make me more angry. YOU WANT ME TO FORGIVE HER!!!!! SHE DOESN’T DESERVE MY FORGIVENESS!!! I ended it there with God and we went to dinner. But God continued to push on my heart about this. At the end of the meal my cousin called and asked if we wanted to say goodbye to my mom since she was likely going to die. At first my answer was NO!!!!! But then I had this wave of sensation run over me, one of a calm that I’d never felt before, God was telling me that this isa what forgiveness feel like, and the He forgave me when I didn’t deserve it either. So, I facetime called with my mother, I looked at her in the phone and it all just came out.

Mom, I forgive you, for all of it. I forgive you for abandoning us, neglecting us and not protecting us. I forgive you, because in this moment I finally understand. I understand that you have been fighting your own battles with mental health and you never were able to win over them. I forgive you, I love you and if this is your time, I want you to go knowing that I don’t hate you and I forgive you.

After I said this, my mom tried to pick herself up and she tried to respond, she somehow made it and lived. We had a relationship for a while until she went back to her old ways. But this time, I held no anger or ill content toward her, I only pitied that she still wasn’t strong enough to overcome herself, and I just prayed that God would continue to work on her. My mother died September 8^th 2021 and we never fully reconciled, but I know that she is with God and no longer struggling with her mental illness. She is now whole and I can finally meet her for real in heaven one day.

          Forgiveness isn’t easy, and it also doesn’t just happen once. You have to make a choice to continue to forgive them when negative thoughts creep up. Lastly, you can forgive and not rekindle relationship, forgiveness is for you, to allow you to no longer carry weight from your past and to truly heal from past trauma. Forgiveness allows you to move on with your life, whether they are part of it or not is up to you and the situation.