So my brother passed away in May. Please don’t tell me you are sorry for my loss, because the truth is I lost my brother a long time ago. You see my brother and I had not had a good relationship for years, many years. Our childhood was what psychologist call “crazy making”. I knew he was in the hospital because my father had someone call me to say he was in ICU. I decided I had no right to go see him because we had not spoken in a very, very long time. I figured if he was in his last moments on this earth, that time belonged to him and his wife, to the people he loved and who loved him. I really didn’t know what his future held, but I knew that if he wanted me there his wife would let me know, otherwise, it was not my place. The next evening I saw on social media, he had passed. I read his obituary in the newspaper. I went to the funeral home and saw his wife, she was gracious and kind. When I stood in the funeral home and looked around, I realized that while our relationship was bad, I could be truly thankful that he had people who loved him and that he loved. I could celebrate that there were people who knew him in ways other than how I had known him. I went to the funeral. I went to his home afterwards, I had not walked through that door in over twenty years. I was thankful for the opportunity. Thankful that I could see the support and love David had been privileged to have around him in the last several years.
You see I had stayed away from things that had to do with our childhood for years. In part because it was painful. In part because it was hard to understand or explain the complexities in our relationship and our relationship with our father. Those relationships were complicated because of sin and wickedness. Complicated because of crazy things that shouldn’t be common in families but too often are. Complicated because children need love that is not toxic, love that is pure and peaceable, nurturing not nasty. Sometimes parents have so much of their own garbage they are unable to provide that love to children. For our parents, their issues ran deep. We were the recipients of a lot of crazy making and one very narcissistic parent. We were never given the love and nurturing we deserved. Security and sanity were not things that occurred in our home. If you knew us growing up, you may or may not have picked up on that, but I am speaking truth. Not just my truth, but the truth.
People have an expectation when you are a Christ Follower, I know, I have had those expectations of myself and others as well, I regret that. My relationship with my brother was a product of our past, but in the present, you can’t erase things that have been done and said. You can move past them independently, but not always together. No matter how much you pray, no matter how much you try. Sometimes the expectation is that God will always have some kind of miraculous ending, restoration, renewal. But the truth is He works in ways we can’t see or understand. I prayed for years that God would not take David off this earth before he was ready to meet his Maker. I choose to believe this was all part of the answer to that prayer. You see he lived seven years past when the doctors told him he would. His wife had seven years that were a gift to her, she will tell you that. I had seven years to let go of the need for restoration on this side, restoration that honestly had just as much to do with my own need to see things resolved as my desire for him to be whole. I had seven years to release all that had been held, to resolve all that needed resolving so that when he passed, I could choose, by faith, to know that all was just as it needed to be. I can celebrate that people knew him and loved him in ways that I could not. I can celebrate that out of a crazy making child hood David found some peace in some way. He told his wife, he knew he was dying and that he had asked the “good Lord” to let him see a calf born and get some taters out of their garden. He didn’t get the taters and he never got to see the calf, but he left behind a wife who loved him and taught him what healthy love was. He left a sister who feels free to celebrate the brother she never knew, and who has a hope that one day she will see him again, because faith is believing in things hoped for the evidence of that not yet seen.
The Bible study book on healing from abuse that I have been working through has been very difficult. It had a list of things children need when they are growing up to develop into healthy adults. We were to circle those we didn’t have. I just left the whole thing blank because none of the things on the list were common in my family. They were simple things, like being valued as a person, having your thoughts and ideas heard, feeling safe to share your feelings without being made fun of, etc. It is hard sometimes to realize that the things we try to hold on to are often the things that are most unhealthy. Kind of like an alcoholic who knows drinking will kill them but they love it too much to lay it down. I have tried for years to reconcile within myself the reality of what my family life was like as a child and my desire to be a part of a healthy family (parent/sibling) now. I have to remind myself that if God allows me to continue to live to see children married and grandchildren then that is when we will have holidays with the house filled with family but as far as family, it won’t happen until then, the divide is too wide. My brain and my body have spent years hiding the hurt, the reality and the raw emotions that got buried with it all. It is hard to unravel now. Sometimes people say why can’t you just move on and forget it. The thing is all the things we don’t deal with affect the decisions we make and don’t make today because it was the foundation on which thought processes were developed and laid. The unraveling is necessary to unpack and repack the things that need to be looked at in the proper light. Talking this week with a fellow survivor we discussed how we always decide something is our fault, whether it is or it isn’t our default mode is to take the blame. I pray that God continues to show me grace and mercy to allow the unraveling to become complete. I want to be whole and healthy as much as is possible. I want to focus and function without all this mess from my childhood affecting me. Looking back I can see now that my body tried dealing with it earlier but my brain wasn’t ready. I had migraines, went thru a time as child that my hair started coming out in handfuls and when I was a teenager I remember crying for days and going to the doctor for intense headaches all I could hear in my head was “broken promises, broken dreams”. I realize now I was grieving, grieving the hopelessness that I felt, grieving what had been lost, grieving what would never be. Not all stories have a happy ending. There are those who may never choose to allow a happy ending to the story of me in their life but I have to realize that is their issue, not mine and it is not mine to make it theirs. Lord knows I have tried and it doesn’t work anyway. So I know that I choose a happy ending for myself, because I can and because I am worth it. I am not and never was what or who I was told I was, or what I was treated like. I am grateful for God’s grace that pulled me out of a miry pit and I pray that others experience His love and mercy the way I have. He has been merciful and loving to me.
Real and Raw-Healing From the Inside Out 