Well, this is going to be hard to write as I hash up memories deep inside that I know need to be brought up over and over so that the scars can be continually healed. Life seems to bring situations, at times, that you wish you didn't have to go through but you know that in the end there really was a purpose for that situation even if you don't want to be honest with that purpose or admit that good came out of the mess. Sorry for the run on sentence. Does this make sense? I hope someone out there can relate to that comment and I'm not the only one with that thought.
Anyway, let's take a ride back to my childhood. I had this "real" fear/nightmare growing up that I would lose my parents. I was never particularly close to them but to some degree they were for most of my life my stronghold and sort of what kept me together. I think that is pretty typical for most people who had parents in their life. We weren't very close and there were reasons for that. For one, I was an athlete and made sports my life and identity, shallow as that is, that's how I was. They never really paid attention to anything sports-related in their life so that created a pretty big gap in my childhood mind. The other was that my father chose to drink to ease the pain that life brought him. I resented that quite harshly and built walls up to protect myself. Isn't that what walls are for? Although I desired, I didn't really include my parents in my social life because of the lack of the same interests and also embarrassment from my father's illness. I wanted my own little family away from my family. I wanted a strong peer social group to share life with...pains & joys.
So, like I said even though we didn't have a wonderful relationship I still deep down inside wanted my parents to be there and for especially my father to be proud of me. As I started following Christ, which happened my senior year of high school, I wanted them to be proud that I was truly changing from the inside out. In turn, I thought that there would be a possibility that God could change my father's heart to stop destroying his body, mind, and soul through drinking. I so clearly remember the Christmas break of my last college year (I say it like that because I was on the five year plan), I was in my room at my house which happens to be in the basement where my father does most of his drinking. I smelled smoke and immediately ran out to the TV room where my father was. He didn't even notice that the smoke was rising from the trash can. He had put a burning cigarette into the trash can and it preceded to start burning the trash in the can. I remember yelling at my father like a father yells at his child. I remember saying something on the lines of him being so drunk that he was going to burn the house down. I was frustrated but this wasn't the first time something like this had occurred. I remember struggling and being so confused about why I had to play the role of the father. I didn't think that was suppose to happen until my father was in his eighties. You know, in a nursing home and all that?
Let's jump ahead about a month. It was during my student teaching that one of the most stressful situations (Nightmares!) in my life occurred. Once again, I remember this like it was yesterday. It was a Saturday morning. One of my roommates' was a youth pastor and he had set up this flag football league for college/high school students. It was a blast! We had games every Saturday morning. This particular Saturday in February was extremely cold and there was snow on the ground. I was waiting for my team to play in it's game when I noticed I had a voicemail. I preceded to check my voicemail and in the message my mother was telling me to call her back right away. She said that there was a fire in our house and dad wasn't doing too well. All those memories of the nightmares that I had when I was little flashed through my mind and I was thinking "This can't be happening!" I never felt such inner anxiety before in my life. It truly was like a nightmare that I would never wake up from. I immediately called my mom and she told me that my father had put a cigarette into the trash can and left the room to go downstairs and drink some more. The smoke alarms went off and as my mother frantically got my 87 year old grandfather out of the house my father went to try and put the fire out. I'm assuming because he was drunk he wasn't very aware of the seriousness of the situation. He was found just inside the sliding back door of the house on the ground. He was literally a second away from getting out of the house. He went into cardiac arrest and went pretty long without receiving any oxygen to his brain. The doctors administered tests to see if any there was any brain activity and after a week of testing we discovered he was brain dead. During this time I remember the great hymn sung by Fernando Ortega title "Give me Jesus!" providing me with a ton of healing. Focusing simply on the love I know that Jesus has for me helped me. I knew He didn't want me going through this situation alone and He wasn't letting me go through it alone. I remember the support of family and friends being so pivotal in my recovery and healing. And as I write this post in my blog I feel continued healing occurring in my soul. As I mentioned earlier, life brings crazy situations at us because of not only our wrong choices but others wrong choices. The most challenging thing is how we handle those situations and where true growth and healing comes from. I had a friend who wrote a song called "Tears of Pain" after this situation occurred. I came to realize through this song that not only my own expression through sharing with others and journaling helped me manage the stress but I've also discovered others expressions have been pivotal as well whether it is music or a book. The underlying theme of the song that my friend Ben Deem wrote has been the major stronghold in my life and that is that no matter what happens in life, God the Father, Son, and Wonderful Counselor will never hide from me. They will always be there for me to gain strength to keep on keeping on with passion and vigor never looking behind but always straining toward what is ahead. Thanks for reading!
To listen to "Tears of Pain" click on site and then play "Tears of Pain."
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