Verbally Abusive Father; Doesn’t Define Me

Last week I introduced The #discoverfreedomproject …in less than a week we have received over 30 submissions created a landing page and secured the domain discoverfreedomproject.com

Please check it out and let me know if you think that there is anything that needs to be added or changed to help everyone feel comfortable in participating…

Tomorrow I will share my next photo in the project…I hope that you are ready to jump in…

My father …I spoke of the damage he brought into my life…the harsh words, the unpredictable anger, the way that he made me scared and defined the way I saw the world…

As a teenager I hated him…hated him for how he couldn’t keep a job…hated him for sitting around depressed all the time…hated him for smoking a carton of cigarettes a week…hated him for being addicted to prescription pain meds…hated his extreme addictive personality… really, I hated most things about him…

It wasn’t until college that my heart began to soften and I started to have compassion toward, instead of heaping judgement on him.

When I was ten I found a paper releasing my father from parole…I always knew that he had been in prison before I was born…What I didn’t know was why…

Murder…my dad had been in prison for murder…it wouldn’t be until after he passed that I would come to know the brutality of the murder…at ten years old I made up a story in my head that it was, of course, a justifiable murder…one that was unavoidable, or an accident…why else would he have gotten out in 9 years?

It was not justifiable and it was NOT an accident …at the age of 17 he brutally stabbed a girl in the woods, I’ve heard drugs could have been a part of it…he then tried to hide the body and went on the run…after being convinced to turn himself in he and some other inmates escaped from a local jail using bed-sheets tied together…eventually he was convicted and spent what I think was 9-10 years in prison…

The place that was both a prison, and the place that he found his Savior Jesus …my dad gave his life to Christ in prison…after being released he and my mom found each other, fell in love, and they eloped!

I have a hard time remembering details about my childhood…but there are a few that show the transformational effects of my father giving his life to Jesus…I basically ‘grew up’ in church…I remember sleeping under the pew, passing notes between cousins, and getting in trouble for giggling with friends during the service…I remember the four of us; my mother, father, brother, and I kneeling on the floor every night and praying together…I KNOW where the foundation of Christ in my life came from…and it was my parents…my dad at one time was veracious in his learning of scripture…have I told you how intelligent my father was? He was wicked smaht…

As I can be thankful for who or what ministry helped my dad while he was behind bars…I can HATE what that place did to him emotionally…nine years locked away anywhere will have an effect on someone’s mental health…now, make those nine years with other violent offenders and you come out with a prison tat that says SATAN on your arm…

I said that it wasn’t until college that I started to forgive him…that is because I matured enough to have some compassion for how screwed up someone must be when they come out of prison…that there was a lot of grace that I could have given my father if I could have seen through all the hate in my heart …The way he reacted to some situations could be because for nine years he had NO control over his life so why would he ever let someone have control over him again…His depression could be a lot of demons in his head…demons that I can’t imagine…

Dad died when I was a junior in college…it was unexpected…he had medical issues (back pain that left him literally blind at times) that contributed to him being addicted to prescription pain medications for most of my life…it was ruled as an accidental overdose of morphine…that is something I don’t think I will ever been 100% sure of…was it an accident because he had been self medicating for so long that he just took too many this time…or was it just an overdose, something done deliberately because he was tired…

I was relived he was gone…along with the relief I carried shame from being relieved my father was gone…

Yes I loved him, yes I had begun to forgive him, and yep it really sucked that I didn’t get to tell him I forgave him and ask for his forgiveness before he died…but I was still happy he was gone …and if you ask me it has proven to be a good thing for my family…

In the 12 years since he passed, I have learned how to identify the ways that I allowed my father’s definitions of me and the world keep me from living in freedom… after identifying the lies, I learned how to identify the truths …and the truths are that without my father I would not be the AMAZING person that I am today…I would not deal with the genetic anxiety and depression that I got honestly from him…and I wouldn’t be able to lead others through that horrible darkness into the light…I would not have the quick wit, intelligence, or artistic abilities…I would not have a dangerously addictive personality, one I learned how to temper by watching how he did not temper his…I am very careful with how I take pain prescription pain medicaid like Hydrocodone after a surgery…I choose not to drink partly because I know it would make my brain happy and I would want more…and I wouldn’t be so confident in who I am if I hadn’t had to wade through all of this…

So I thank my father for doing the best he could, so that I could then do the best that I can …and continue to learn how my best can be better…

This is the attempt at a short version of how I have found freedom from the verbal abuse of my father…history is a lot more complex and impossible to share in one blog post so please forgive that it isn’t as rounded out as I would like it to be…

All of the submissions to the #discoverfreedomproject have a story behind them…they might not contain murder…but I am sure they are as intense…if you would like to SHARE the story behind your #discoverfreedomproject submission, go here to contact me…I would love to work with you…

Now, are you ready for tomorrow?

What Can’t Steal Your Joy?