Being a single parent for the majority of my son’s life, I found myself lacking in a few areas that would help him grow into a fine young man.
The unconditional love and acceptance of a mom was one of those qualities. Mom? Mother? What was that?? Just words to me. I never had one, so the concept was totally lost on me. I was raised in a totally dysfunctional home, one where “tough love” treatment was interpreted as ‘give the child a beating’ to get your point across. Having a total of nine children in my family, my younger sister and I (we were the youngest), were spared from that. But not from the psychological terror of hearing it, or sometimes even seeing the brutality.
My youngest sister’s characteristics were meek, mild, and shy. Mine?? Totally the opposite!! I was full of rage growing up. I never physically touched anyone in anger, but boy did I use my tongue as a two edged sword. I had a girlfriend point out to me one time that she was amazed when she witnessed my original reaction to a conversation we were having as sad. She told me she saw two tears spill from my eyes, and then total rage spew from my mouth.
I had blocked off anyone or anything that represented love. By the time I was in my mid-30’s and my son was around 12, I knew I was heading down a very dangerous path. I caught myself at times contemplating taking the same path my mother did…which was to end my life early.
The morning I woke up from a horrifying realistic dream of me planning how I would take my life, is when everything came to a head. What had awoken me was the phone. My girlfriend (yes the same one who witnessed my rage born from feeling sorrow), was calling just to chat. When she began the conversation with, “Hi, what are you up to?” I don’t think she was prepared for the answer. I know I was shocked that I had actually told her. She talked me off the ledge so to speak, but I knew I was in serious trouble.
That night, my brother who was living in another state, called me out of the clear blue sky. I don’t think we had talked in a few years. I say “out of the clear blue sky” because at that time in my life, I could not recognize God in any of this. Once again I totally shocked myself when my brother opened his side of the conversation: “Hey! I have been thinking about you and thought I would give you a call. So how are things going with you?” I know he wasn’t expecting the answer he got. There was a very long pause and then he just started talking. Not panicky like my girlfriend had. He just took the lead in the conversation and kept it calm and only asked questions that were un-intrusive to how I actually felt. As I could feel myself calming inside, I started to ask him about how he was doing. His answer just about knocked me off my chair. He said he had gotten married about 6 months earlier. Married? I guess it was a long time since we had talked. I didn’t even know that there was a new person in his life.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, my brother suggested that I needed a good support group surrounding me. I wasn’t quite sure what he was trying to say to me. What? Like a self help group of some sort? What he said next totally floored me. He suggested that I move down where he was! He started telling me of this amazing church he had joined and that all the people in there were basically seeking a closer relationship with God. The more he talked about this and me moving the more I started to feel like I was waking up from some deep and unhealthy slumber. My heart started to beat a little stronger and I was beginning to feel something I had not felt in a very long time. Peace and Hope. I told him I didn’t know how it could happen, but I would seriously think about it.
That was the beginning of the most unbelievable and awesome journey I have ever been on! From the night he called me, until the day my son and I were driving out of the state we lived in, was a total of about a month and a half.
This was so surreal. I have several stories of the drive itself, plus many more for the years I lived there. Most every single one of these stories I have written are happy and adventurous. For that was finally my realization of what life was all about. It is a journey that we are on from the moment we take our first breath. While some of it is beyond our control and some of it is not pleasant, we discover if we are paying attention, that we can change direction, we can choose different ways of looking at things, we can in essence gain control of our direction and maintain and stay the course.