A Broken Soul Cries Out For Our Love

 

A few months back I wrote a piece called Unhappy? Reject Your Parents. Yesterday a woman left on that post the "comment" below. I'm here presenting what she wrote, exactly as she wrote it, in the hope that those who read it will pray for the healing of this good woman's heart. Please help me to show this sister of ours the love that in her life she's clearly, and tragically, been too often denied.

 

Dear Mr. Shore,

I found this article about rejecting your parents through a random web search about parents rejecting their children.

I had no choices in my childhood, was dragged all over the country by a mother who was desperately chasing my father, who didn't want us. My mother cut off from her family and so did my father. I never knew their families and only met my mother's later in my life after finding them.

It has taken me many years of admitting my parents just didn't like me and lost out on a nice child, and the last 3 years have been so revealing. I have been living my life on more automatic reactions rather than really thinking about why I do the things I do and who are or are not my friends. I finally stopped and looked at it all and it was terribly painful.

I was so discouraged from making friends, keeping friends, finding the truth and knowing who I was that I fell apart in adulthood. I was set up with no coping skills or success in anything for life. I was SUPPOSED to fail. So I could, I guess, reinforce for them,  that life is hard and you cannot win. Then I was mentally beaten by a God that loved me ON CONDITION that I did what HE wanted or ELSE. The love of God was spouted out as some kind of paneacia but when I tried to learn about his so called unconditional love I was thumped for having assumptions that I might actually be a good child rather than a waste of space or just a servant.

My parents always made me feel it was my fault for my problems. Everything is MY FAULT because I didn't react correctly or I just "misunderstood" what them meant, even though they changed the rules again and I missed the memo. That is tiresome and I reject it. It is my parents fault for giving me nothing to succed in this life. I had to go around them and learn all I  could so I could at least function. Everything I learned I learned alone through books and observation. I have been pretending to be normal but in reality I feel lost and undesirable.

For years I have to correct everything my parents did to me, both physically and legally, and for two summers I have had epiphanies as to why I have reacted to the world as a hostile place that does not love you or ever will. I learned to hate myself before allowing anyone else to hurt me with that same attitude. That way they didn't have to constantly beat me up mentally and really demolish my soul.I did it for them.

I have had to reject my parents compleatly, their idea of a God that loves you ONLY IF..... I tired of hearing how it was all my fault.
 
I was only trying to protect the shreds of my self esteem and inner person they didn't get a chance to rip apart.

Since their deaths, which freed my soul from having to pretend to be whatever they wanted, which would change every time I thought I figured out what they wanted in a daughter, I am completely ready to forget them. I feel like lousy Christian because I cannot find anything about them to honor. They taught me to fear, to hate myself, and gave me no encouragement on how to interact with others in this world. They destroyed all my attempts at a better life till I finally left my home state for many years.

I felt used by them for their needs mostly. It is very hard to trust anyone who has tried to kill you as a four-year old child because it would be better to send you back to God. It basically leaves you unsure of your place on on this earth or if you have a right to survival at all. Desparately pleasing them was a survival trait I learned. Don't ask too much or get out of line.

I am trying very hard to forgive them, but more I would rather reject them and run toward something better. They are dead now, I must admit I am so glad I don't deal with them any longer. I had to burn my mothers journals because she said NOTHING good about me in them. She once told me I wasn't good enough to have children, so I'd better not. I granted her wish. My body stressed itself into disease, so that I could never get pregnant.

I have felt very lonely for years although I am married to a very understanding man. He has seen this kind of ill treatment through his job and has a lot of patience. I spent years in emotional distress and physical illness and wondering if I had the right to be alive. My parents instilled in me that I was worthless to them, so I always wondered what good I was on this earth. I am working towards self love, which is NOT SELFISH. I need to love myself enough to stay alive and not give up. I do fairly well most of the time, but sometimes I get very depressed when I really need to talk to someone to make sure my feelings are natural. I am afraid to reveal my vulnerablility to others because they can use it as leverage later when they turn on me.

I keep having "epiphanies" as to why I am doing things I do, and that I no longer have to work in survival mode, but can <em>choose </em>what to do or how to react.
 
I have only one other sibling who was not there for the major beatings I had to watch my mother endure or the alcoholism I had to witness as my father went into womanizing and anger.
 
I don't think my brother knows how deeply it has affected me but I know he has been deeply hurt too. He admitted to me that he has been harshly judgemental toward others because that is all he experienced as a child. No love, just judgement. Neither of us thought we could ever please our parents. He is doing better than I am. Maybe because they gave him more time or he was the "boy" and I was not as valuable.
 
I must say I do not like my parents. I am trying to return to God but I really need some Christians to show me that unconditional LOVE does exist. That it's possible for someone not to judge you because you are different, unsocial or had a rotten life, and for them not to fear who I am might "rub off on them."  I can't say I have met many Christians of this kind. Mostly I hear from them how everyone outside of their little sect is going to Hell and wrong. In the four years I have been living in our town I have had ONE Christian person reach out to me unconditionally and lovingly. I was like a starving skeleton eating food for the first time in thirty years. I didn't think Christians wanted anyone new around them or anyone so hurt they cannot seem to understand how deep it goes. I wonder if there really are Christian who care anymore. Not in my town I guess. Only one person at all, I guess.
 
I guess Christians have become too frightened to reach out to others in need. Somehow a sick wounded bleeding person is supposed to crawl to a church and beg for a little help. I wonder if Jesus would have slunk back and kept his mouth shut because others might punish him for sharing the gospel. I guess not because he died for us. I am trying to relate that to me.

I pray that God will help me to forgive my parents but I must admit I would like to just put them out of my mind for the rest of my life. I wonder if we see these people in the afterlife? I would much rather see my cat who loved me unconditionally and understood all my moods and just snuggled me when I was down.

I wonder if animals are not God's way of showing we the rejected that there is some kind of Love out there for us too. Sometimes I wish I had been born a cat or dog without the hate and anger and hurtfullness of humans. But that is probably selfish to want as well.
 
I think I am looking for my place in the world and feel cut off and lonely. I understand it when someone who looks perfectly normal and happy on the outside then manages to commit suicide and then the rest of the people around them say, I don't understand, he/she seemed so happy, what happened? Then the obvious clues start to become clear and everyone realizes they could have done a little more, said a kind word or actually maybe tried to help the person so wounded that living becomes harder than dying.

I pray that God can come to me and I can let him in and I can forgive my parents. it is going to take time and it would help if others would understand me. But I don't look for that anymore. I just would like to feel that complete overcoming of the holy spirit everyone talks about and I can find the ability to forgive and forget and move one. I feel like the sick person who has to heal herself alone.

 

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