Hey Y’all! Hope you had a great week. I wanted to talk more about the subject of Respect. Every time I say the word I can’t help but sing it like Aretha Franklin. R-E-S-P-E-C-T  Find out what it means to me. LOL You are going to sing that in your head as you read this week’s blog. Sorry. hehehe

Growing up we were taught to respect our mother. We were taught to respect authority. We were taught to respect our elders. If we disrespected mom or dad we were punished. Now don’t get me wrong – I totally believe in that and those are the things I taught my children. I did not allow my children to disrespect me. I also didn’t allow them to disrespect each other.  I believe you can respect the position but necessarily the person.  I also believe in spanking. I did not abuse my children but I corrected them with love. Discipline has to to be delivered with love.  The Bible says: Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him (Proverbs 13:24). But it also says: Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4). And then there is the one that says: A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls (Proverbs 25:28). So this brings me to my next thought. What in the world happened to this man as a child to provoke so much anger in him? Why did he lack self-control? Why was he so broken that he felt the need to break us? Well I do know bits and pieces of the story and it is pretty ugly. I am not trying to justify his behaviour, just trying to understand it. Because if I can understand it maybe I can learn to forgive.

I recently saw the movie “The Shack”, I tried several times to read the book but never got very far so I watched the movie. If you haven’t seen it, you absolutely must. Without giving too much away, there is a scene where the boy, now grown, sees his father as a boy and is shown the abuse that he endured as a child. This absolutely gripped me so hard I was sobbing out loud. We as humans always ask WHY? We can’t grasp the concept of the fact that God allows bad things to happen to children. It’s called free will. It’s complicated and we will never understand fully. But this I do know, God loves us ALL! He loved that little boy who endured abuse from his father and he loved his son who endured abuse from him. So I had to accept that God loves my dad just as much as he loves me. That is hard. But on the other side of that, there are also consequences to our actions. We are responsible for what we do with our lives. Just because we were abused as children does not mean that we have to be abusers. We can break that chain.

Consequences. We all suffer consequences of our decisions in life. Consequences comes in so many different forms. I am not God and I don’t claim to know everything there is to know about God’s discipline but I do believe that it comes in the form of consequences. He is our Heavenly Father and He disciplines us with love. Sometimes it’s harsh and sometimes it’s so small that you may not even recognize it as such, but it is there.

So discipline without love creates lack of respect. While I did not disrespect him outright, I had zero respect for him as a father, as a husband, as a mentor, as a role model. I respected his position and I respected his authority but I did not respect him. As his illness progressed my compassion progressed. I did not want to see him suffer but a small part of me wondered if this was his consequences, his discipline. He had caused so much pain to others and now he was in constant pain. In the latter stages of his illness when he was in a rehab facility (that he would never return from), we had the opportunity to talk. He was in a place where I could control the situation so I wasn’t afraid to tell him how I felt about things. I wasn’t afraid that he would hurt me. He was vulnerable and I used that opportunity to say the things I needed to say. I went by there every day after work and we would sit out in the garden and talk. Sometimes it wasn’t pretty and sometimes we just cried together. But it was a healing process that we both needed. He asked for forgiveness and I gave it. I granted him the peace he needed because he admitted he was scared to meet God face to face because of all the things he had done in his lifetime. I assured him that God loved him and that if he had asked for forgiveness that it was given. Respect. I respected the process and he gained respect for me. How’s that for a lesson? Whew!

 

Hey Y’all! It’s me again. I’ve been thinking about the “Knight in shining armor” rescue and often wondered why it/he never came. So here’s the thing – after my mom divorced my father I saw him one time (that I can remember) when I was about 7, 8 ish – can’t remember exactly the age. I do remember he came over right before we moved to Texas and took lots of pictures of me and gave me a doll. But after that I never saw him again.

As a younger child I would lay in bed at night crying and longing for him to come take me from this place. I wanted him to hug me and tell me he loved me and that he would never let anyone hurt me again. It. Never. Happened. I have no idea if he knew anything about me after we left. I have no idea if he talked to family members to check on me or if he ever even called my mom to check on me. I don’t know why visitation wasn’t set up, I don’t know why he never tried to see me for holidays or birthdays. He just ceased to exist in my world.

What I do know is that the man I called dad was an extremely jealous, possessive and controlling man. So what part did he play in this situation? Did he threaten him not to see me? Was he so jealous that he didn’t want him around my mom? Did he not want him to know what he was doing to his child? These are legitimate questions. BUT, as I stated before – we didn’t talk about these things. In fact we didn’t talk about anything. The generation of silence and secrets strikes again.

I have since found out some things about my biological father. He re-married and had two more children that I got to meet as an adult. Unfortunately I did not get to see him because he passed away when I was 18. Still lots of unanswered questions.

They say that girls marry their father so as I began to date, the kind of guys I was attracted to varied. I was looking for my saviour so I was attracted to the nice guys and although they treated me well they did not make the cut.  The guys who took advantage of me and treated me not so good were the ones I gravitated towards. WHY IS THAT??? I don’t/didn’t want to be treated as though I am not important. I want to be treated like I am the only girl in the world and I want to be loved and respected. Most of all RESPECTED. But because I did not get that at home I guess I thought I didn’t deserve it. What does that word even mean? The only thing we were taught to respect were the rules. Rules didn’t come with love and understanding they were just demanded. So how do you demand respect? You don’t! Respect is earned. Period. I had to learn to respect myself before I could ever expect anyone else to. And boy, that took a long, long time. Well into my adulthood I learned the lesson of respecting myself. As I became a parent I tried to teach my children the value and definition of respect. I hope I did that.

Hey Ya’ll – Welcome back. In my last post I talked about silence and secrets. I apparently touched a nerve. I know, I know, no one wants to air their dirty laundry and I get it but this is MY story, I lived it and I have overcome it and I really want to share how God taught me lessons through the pruning. Sadly there is going to be some collateral damage. It is not my intention to ruin reputations or to throw people under the bus. But…….if you will hang in there with me I promise the story gets better.

As I became more involved in Church or should I say as I found a way to get out from under the control at home, I found a freedom that I didn’t quite know what to do with. I still didn’t talk about what was going on at home. I did make some great friends along the way. Then one day it happened – I discovered boys. More accurately boys discovered me. I was over developed for my age and looked much older than I was and boys started to notice me and they gave me the attention that I so desperately longed for. You see girls need that healthy relationship with their father to be able to have a healthy relationship with a boyfriend/man/husband and most of all God. As you can imagine I was totally attracted to the wrong kind of boy. First of all I was so extremely shy that I didn’t even know how to talk to a boy and I had zero skills in standing up for myself because we were not allowed to do that at home. As a teenager I didn’t know the difference between good attention and bad attention, so that resulted in years of allowing men to disrespect me as an adult which led to failed marriages and bad relationships. Jeez, I could write a book on that subject. Maybe another day. I can remember as a child longing for my biological father to come and rescue me from the hell I was living in (the night in shining armor thing) but he never came. I began to look for that kind of relationship – I wanted someone to save me, but little did I know, God was the only one who could save me. After failed relationships God began to show me that my happiness is not found in another person or even in my circumstances but in my heart and in my relationship with Him. I learned a lot about God in church, I learned a lot about the bible in church and I even learned about forgiveness in church but I was not quite ready or maybe I just didn’t really know how to let go and completely surrender everything to Him. So the lesson continued.

Then it happened, we found ourselves in a situation where he needed me to help him. I didn’t hesitate and stepped right into that role. You see he had open heart surgery and when he came home some things went a little wrong and he needed someone to come over every day and dress his wound. Through this process God began to show me that I could have compassion for this man – this man who showed me no compassion. What in the world was happening????? Then came years of illness and the compassion grew into love. I began to feel love for this man whom I had hated most of my life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hey Y’all! Welcome back to my Blog. First of all let me say that I am overwhelmed at all the private messages in response to my previous post. There are a lot of people out there that share similar life experiences. Some took years of therapy to overcome and some still don’t quite know how to put it behind them. I guess – no scratch that,  I KNOW that is part of the reason for sharing my story.

So let’s talk about Tolerance. That’s a really big word. There are many levels of tolerance. You hear people say “I have a really high tolerance for pain” or “I have zero tolerance for that person”. TOLERANCE: or toleration is the state of tolerating, or putting up with, conditionally.  That sounds like a pretty small definition but it spans into so many aspects of life – you can literally use it in every situation because of the word CONDITIONALLY (in a way that is subject to one or more conditions or requirements being met). So I believe tolerance can be a state of mind. You can decide for yourself what you are willing to tolerate or you can be forced into a situation where you have no choice but to tolerate the circumstances or the person. This was my situation.

So when I was around 6 or 7 we moved to Georgia. I CAN say that things did change because I believe certain influences were not present. I CAN’T say that the abuse stopped, but it was less frequent. The fear was still there because you never knew what would trigger an episode. The drinking was less frequent because he had a job that required responsibility. The physical abuse, the verbal and emotional abuse and the humiliation was still very much present in our lives. Oh don’t get me wrong we had food on the table and we had clothes to wear, we got presents for Christmas,  we had birthday parties, we went on vacations, we went to neighborhood picnics – everything other families did – we did. On the outside we looked like a normal family. I have since learned that “normal” is only a setting on the washing machine. What happened inside of our home when no one else was around is where the nightmare existed.

There are those people who say “just try not to dwell on the bad stuff – try to remember the good stuff”, “the past is behind you – let it go”. Yeah, that’s fine and dandy when you become an adult and believe me when I say that I  CHOOSE to reflect on the good things when my childhood comes to mind because there is no reason to dwell on the bad stuff because it is behind you. BUT when you are a child in the middle of the bad stuff – not so much. As a child you enjoy the good things when they are happening but when there is abuse, you become more aware of what happened to trigger that abuse, what did I do wrong this time, I promise I won’t do it again. You believe that you are the problem. That is a LIE straight from the devil. As an adult I am now aware of the past events in his life that led him to behave the way he did. But as a child I just hated him.  There was no love in my heart for him. I became tolerant of him because I had no choice. I became tolerant of his behaviour because I had no choice. I – just – hated – him.

So let’s jump ahead to the 4th grade. I had a teacher named Mrs. Charleston, her husband was a Baptist preacher. Mrs. Charleston read this thing called the Bible every morning before class began. She prayed for us and our families every day. She introduced me to Him. I was forced to say prayers every night before I went to bed but I was never taught about the person I was praying to – it was just a form of obedience to the man in control. There’s another big word – control. We will talk about that later. So I started learning about God but still didn’t really grasp the fact that God loved me and that I could talk to Him about my problems, because that kind of relationship was foreign to me (we will also address that subject later). A girl in my class invited me to Sunday school and I could not believe it when my parents agreed to let me go. They would drop me off and pick me up every Sunday and this went on for months until one Sunday I asked Jesus into my heart and got baptized. I didn’t tell my parents about it because I was afraid they would not let me go back.  I can’t remember ever talking about things as a family – we just obeyed and kept our mouths shut. Over the course of the next few years I was very involved in Church and went on numerous youth outings – but one thing that I never remember is anyone asking me how my home life was. They didn’t want to know about it because to acknowledge it would mean they would have a responsibility to get involved. I guess that generation was of the mindset that if you don’t talk about it then it doesn’t exist. Like the Miranda Lambert song – “Run and hide your crazy and start actin’ like a lady ‘Cause I raised you better, gotta keep it together Even when you fall apart”. The generation of silence and secrets. It was more prevalent than you think. Church was also my escape from the reality of home and it became my social outlet. A freedom I would come to crave more and more.

Let’s go all the way back to the beginning. Well as far back as I can remember anyway. The summer of 1964 I was about 18 months old living in Louisiana, I can remember rolling around in the floor trying to get my daddy’s attention. He was watching TV and my mom was ironing. I know what you’re thinking “There’s NO WAY you remember that far  back”. But it’s true. Shortly after that my dad and mom got a divorce, which was not that common back then. AND here is where my journey begins…

So my mom meets this man and they get married and move to Texas. Things were ok in the beginning but soon it all went very wrong. Without going into all the depressing details – there was abuse – a – lot – of – abuse!!!! We tried to leave on numerous occasions but were quickly picked up and brought back to more abuse. After a period of time and many failed attempts of leaving this situation we settled in to a life of fear. “FEAR” this is where it began and this has been my battle in life. Childhood should be about fireflies and fairies and ice cream and playgrounds. Mine was fear – fear of being killed. Did you hear me? Fear of being “KILLED”. This is not a thing a child makes up because a child does not think that way unless it has been a real threat or taught. “Do you want to die today?” was a common question in our home. This not only came from the man my mom married but from his mother as well, which explains a lot about HIS childhood and why he was the way he was. We lived with this woman (his mother) for a while and life was pure hell on earth. Then along came my sister and then my brother. Life did not get better. The drinking, abuse and threats continued. I was 6 years old and going to Kindergarten. Didn’t anyone see the sadness in my eyes or the extreme shyness due to fear? Didn’t anyone hear my inner screams to save me? Didn’t anyone know the horrible things I was subjected to? The answer is no, or if they did they did nothing to help me. There were no family members, friends or teachers who saw the signs. The only One who saw my fear and felt my fear was God. So this is where my first lesson began. I know you are thinking forgiveness is my first lesson but that comes much, much later. The first lesson is Tolerance. To be continued……

Hey Peaches!!!! Welcome to my Blog. John 15:2 says “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.” So let’s get down and dirty about the “Pruning Process”…