Some Hurt Runs Very Deep

Today I wondered:
"Is this how it felt for Him days and millennia after He cast out 1/3 of His children? Does He still recall the sweet interactions He had with them? Does His heart still ache?"

What lead to this musing? When I was a kid there were a few things that happened that were very painful and difficult to bear.

One of those things was how my parents disciplined us kids. Dad was volatile-to put it mildly. He took out his anger and frustrations on Mom a lot. As we two older kids aged, his anger started turning toward us.

One day my big brother had gone out to play baseball in the street with the other kids. He hit that ball so hard it busted a car window. Oh man! You should have seen the kids scatter.

Soon enough there was a conversation between dad and the car owner, a promise to pay for the damages and then a conversation (politely put) between dad and my big brother. Every pay day dad would make a payment on the repair bill on his way home from work. When he got home he'd whip my brother. Not with a belt, but with a 2x4. I don't know what he was thinking. I guess he wasn't. I think that only happened one of the times and I don't remember if it was the first or the last payment.

There was another time I did something really, really bad. I don't remember what it was, I just remember dad whipping me with a 2" diameter piece of bamboo. The saving grace was I got to keep my pants on and by the time the split in the bamboo traveled far enough up the pole it stopped pinching my butt and started pinching his hand. That's about when he decided he had taught the lesson he needed and stopped whipping me.

So much for that experience. But because of that happening I was ever watchful as we were raising our children for such anger management issues-both in myself (I did NOT want to be like my daddy) and in my husband.

One day when our oldest was about four years old and acting like a four year old, my hubby was very frustrated while he was getting ready to leave for work. He finally picked the child up under his arms, marched with him into his bedroom and tossed him on his bed-he did hit the wall. Wasn't hurt, wasn't crying. But I was enraged. I couldn't let this happen and go on and get worse in time.

So I called the police. Yes, on my husband. I told him I had. He started to leave but I reminded him that if he did I would tell the police where he worked so he had a choice to either chat with them at home or at work. He opted for at home.

The officers came and evaluated the situation and offered that sometimes when raising a family with all the stress involved it's a good idea to see a marriage and family counselor. We made the commitment to go to one.

That started a new journey of change and family development. Over the next eight years we saw five different counselors. Each specializing in different things and some of them we only saw once or twice.

As we were discussing this tonight so I could ask his permission to write this up I asked him if he remembered the event. He thought about it and said that right at first he didn't. Then he said something sweet, "Twas I, but tis not I. Yes you can post it."

He's so awesome. He has changed so much for the better. And what's even more awesome is that he's still working on it.

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