Forgiveness

My book says this....

You say you have forgiven, but occassionally something happens to remind you that all is not well in your relationship with the person you are supposed to have forgiven. Surprising feelings of anger or depression may pursue you. You have skipped an important prerequisite to forgiving: acknowledging the intensity of the hurt you experienced.

The hurt I experienced was traumatic. It was harmful to my soul. It was extremely painful. It is awful to be hurt by the people who are supposed to love you no matter what. And you begin to believe that something is wrong with you, if the people you have an automatic love card with don't even love you. It must mean there is something wrong with me, something fundamentally unlovable. I was abused. I was abused physically as well as verbally. At the dinner table once, with my grandpa, we were having such a nice dinner and my dad made the comment to my sister and I..."like how you two were abused"....I nearly choked...he was admitting it, what was this? and my sister said, abused?? what abuse? what are you talking about? And the earth moved under me, I looked at my dad and he looked right at me and I just looked back down at my plate. And for a long time, I questioned myself...am I crazy? Why did my sister just say that? I don't know, we didn't ever talk about it. But it has scared me some, because many of my memories are fuzzy or I don't remember them the way my sister remembers them. Regardless, I grew up in a painful environment. An environment, that to this day, years and years later, still brings me to tears thinking about it. It was wrong. It was harmful. I came away damaged. Scared. Ashamed. Angry. I hated living there. I hated what they did or didn't do. I hate that little girl was standing in the mirror asking to be loved, to be affirmed and her mother walked away and called her stupid. I hate that part of my heart feels blocked off. I have to come to a place of forgiveness knowing I may never get acknowledgement from my parents. Not an I'm sorry. Nothing. I have to forgive them, for my own well being. I have to forgive them without making excuses for them about any cycles they may have repeated. I have a choice to repeat this cycle or do the hard work to end it. Without their acknowledgement. They had a choice too.

I ran away hurting deeply. No one should ever have to experience the things I experienced. The true impact of what happened to me, is that I came away a different person than I was meant to be. I came away a scared, insecure, hurting person. All I have ever wanted is to be loved. I used to think I wanted 5 children and I wanted them all to be boys...because boys were always good to their mothers and how could I not feel loved with 5 boys of my own? I came away a person afraid of true intimacy, afraid that I would ask someone to love me and they wouldn't love me back. I came away, afraid to meet new people, no one was going to like me. I still feel shy and stifled in new situations, because no one is going to like me, anything I would have to say is worthless.

I came away so hurt, that I would be a freak when visiting my sister, afraid to do or say something wrong, not because of her, I realize now, but because she might decide not to love me back either and I think I couldn't handle that because I need her to love me, even more so because my parents didn't.

I never tried to learn how to play chess, thinking I wasn't smart enough to learn it and be able to play it. But really, because I believed the messages my parents gave me...I was stupid and chess was a game for smart people, not stupid people.

the pain, is real and deep and like layers of an onion. It happened and it was damaging, to my belief in my self, to other relationships, to fearing intimacy...

I invite Jesus into my pain, to soothe it, to heal it, to change it.