This article is for mature audience; Graphic in nature; Not for the weak or judgemental
Written by: Blessed & Highly Favored
My mother died four years ago and I’m still having a hard time going through her stuff. In fact, there are boxes in my possession that I haven’t gone through since March of 2004. The boxes are full of papers, pictures, letters, etc.
I really loved my mother and I miss her terribly. I know she’s in heaven and I’ll just have to wait to see her again.
Now, my father…I hated him. He molested me for years as a child, forcing me to perform oral sex on him, and fondled every part of my body. He made me fear him, fear my feelings, and sowed the seeds of distrust. I didn’t know what love was, only that I was exploited for his pleasure. And I never told my mother. I thought I was the one who was being bad, almost asking to be abused. As so this is how a child thinks.
He was a violent alcoholic and began to dabble in marijuana, LSD, mushrooms, peyote and coke. When he was not beating my mother like a man he was ripping up her homework (she was going to college before laptops, and everything was on paper-term papers, math equations, homework, etc.). In front of her, he would tear her work into little squares and then burn it. All the while, he would be saying, “You think you’re better than me? Smarter than me? I’ll show you. You’re nothing. Nothing.” And she would sit there and watch months of hard work disappear before her eyes, while sobbing and pleading for him to stop. And he wouldn’t. He enjoyed watching her suffer and this torture was a prelude to the physical abuse to come later that evening. He was one self absorbed man with an inferiority complex.
Now his aggression wasn’t only vented on my mother and our family (me, a younger sister and brother), but he fought with everybody. He carried a huge mountain-sized chip on his shoulder and liked to fight. His many bar fights and drunken driving accidents landed him in the hospital too many times to remember, as well as being in jail. We had no money because he had to pay the bail bondsman, lawyers, hospitals, new cars, etc., and all this on a heavy equipment operator’s wages. When he wasn’t incurring the usual alcoholic’s expenses, he was buying rounds for his buddies or gambling his pay away. Of course his fun was more important than feeding or clothing his family. More times than I wish to remember was going to the laundry-mat to scour the washing machines and dryers for loose change to buy milk and bread. It takes an awfully small man to consider the opinions of his friends rather than provide for the welfare of his family.
So amid the drug abuse from both parents, (my Mom now took prescription drugs to handle her depression which led to her suicide attempts landing her in the psyche lock-up for months) violence and alcoholism, I thought that surely there had been a mistake @ the hospital when I was born. I did not think or act like my family. I felt like an alien, and decided at the ripe old age of 11, I was going to throw myself into school and NEVER DO DRUGS or ALCOHOL because look how stupid it makes you act.
Years go by; I went to college and was living in a little town in Northern California. I was at work and I got a call from my brother. He told me that my father had died in a car accident…his fault, drunk driving. Evidently he was racing down a street with a curve to the left. He didn’t make it, hit the curb, flipped 3 times and landed in the front yard of his brothers’ friends’ house wrapped around a palm tree. He was moving back to his mother’s house, with all his personal belongings in the back of the car, including a 20” TV. When the car went airborne, the TV flipped, shearing his head in half. He died instantly. Here he was 51 years old and still acting like a punk, and finally all his past caught up with him.
I caught a flight to LA with my sister. My brother met me at the gate while my mother waited in the car. After we picked up the bags, we got to the car and there was my mother, wailing and crying her eyes out. What? Grieving? Grieving for a man who beat you like a man, made you feel like nothing, played around on you and left you with kids with nothing to feed them? I was very angry at her for shedding a single tear for such a monster.
I was glad he was dead. Glad he put me out of his and my misery. How fitting he would die in the manner which he brought us so much pain and violence.
I felt nothing; nothing but a sense of urgency to get that waste of skin into a coffin as quickly as possible and under dirt. It was as if a bug had been killed: One less monster sucking up air.
At the funeral, our tradition is to have the casket lowered into the ground and those in attendance throw handfuls of dirt onto the casket as a means to say good-bye. My heart was so cold and steely, if I could have driven a dump truck full of dirt, I would have driven it to the cemetery and dumped the load on his casket. Then, I would have taken a load of cement, and poured all of it to show those attending how intense the hatred seethed in my heart. His selfishness and perversity robbed me of a precious, personal gift G-d gave me to share with His chosen.
And because of this anger, I became cynical, emotionally removed from any intimacy, and had absolutely no desire whatsoever to EVER GET MARRIED. I became a player, using men as personal entertainment, not caring about them at all. All I cared about was MY PLEASURE WITHOUT COMMITMENT, and the freedom to have as many as I could, whenever I felt like it.
About 2 years after my fathers’ death, the Lord came into my life big time. The first thing He dealt with me was forgiveness. He had forgiven me of all my sins I had committed, and now I was to exercise that same process to others. He dealt with me about my father.
I argued with Him about forgiving him. How could I forgive the very man who was suppose to have loved me and protected me from the very slime he had become? How could I forgive the very man who violated me?
And made me do shameful acts for his perverse pleasure? I said, “No G-d! And I hope he’s in hell burning forever for what he did to me, my mother and my family. Besides, he was dead…how could I forgive a dead man?”
G-d reminded me that Jesus went to the cross for all of our sins: my fathers’ sins, all of them. Although I had been scarred by his actions, the love of G-d and the power of forgiveness was the first step of my healing. But I had to take the first step in allowing G-d to open up my heart and start peeling away the scar tissue that had been there for so long. He revealed to me if I continued to hold on to this hate and bitterness, I would have essentially placed my pain and suffering beyond the cross, making the death of Jesus meaningless.
Was I above Jesus? No. Was my abuse worse than the humiliation and torture endured by Jesus? No.
I could not hold on to what was destroying me. I had to lay it down at the feet of Jesus, and walk away. It didn’t matter whether he was dead or alive, the cancer of unforgiveness was killing me affecting every part of me and I needed to change.
It took awhile for me to lay it all down. And three years after the death of my father, I mourned his loss. It was 30 years after the fact that I could even talk about my father’s abuse. Now, I talk about it all the time. Satan wants us to feel shame, and continue to isolate ourselves; Don’t fall into the trap.
If you have been abused, it’s vital to get help and to report it no matter who it is. It took me 30 YEARS TO TALK ABOUT THIS. Now, I don’t care who knows because I understand who I am in Christ; the shame has been removed, and I AM FREE. Praise Him and His Holiness which reigns forever and ever. I am a daughter of the most High G-d, made in His image and free of my past, full of mercy and compassion. Be free, NOW!!!
