I’ve really been struggling to write this blog for the past several weeks. However, just a couple of days ago God revealed to me how exactly He would like for me to tell this story and that it must be told. Just a heads up, I do have to tell some back-story for you to even begin to understand what happened at Training Camp. I am going to be open and raw with my blogs so this blog and more to may not paint the pretty pictures that you might think that they should, but God is in it all, even the ugly parts of life.
So for me to start this story and for you to understand why what happened at training camp is such a big deal I have to take you back to my childhood. The early portion of my childhood was wonderful.
From the time that I was about 9 my mother physically and emotionally abused me. For years, the home that I lived in was unstable. My family was perceived one way on the outside and then it really was on the inside. The environment of my home changed everyday too, depending on whether or not my father was home. My dad worked 24 hour shifts so on his days off home was a much better place than it was when he was at work. Because of this my dad had no idea what was going on.
Because of the environment at home, I really struggled with several things that I will address in later blogs.
For years any one that heard about my rocky relationship with my mother in general would tell me to forgive and forget because she’s my mother. I never understood this philosophy because the hurt was so deep and I couldn’t forgive just because she was my mother.
So for a while I had really been working on forgiving my mother and I really thought that I had entered a really good spot of forgiveness going into training camp. Then we had the night at training camp where we talked about finding freedom in forgiveness. To be completely honest, I still felt really weighed down with everything. That night the topic of forgiveness was covered in a way that no one had ever explained it to me before. I really worked to place to be able to forgive, but didn’t feel safe to be around my mother. It was that night that I learned that I could forgive and find freedom in that from a distance. I also learned that I need to work toward a place of not just forgiving but also being a blessing to her and the others that have hurt me in life. So that is where I currently am; I am working toward a place of being a blessing toward my mother.
I also feel that the complete freedom is something that we are always working toward, but something that we won’t find this side of heaven because we are imperfect beings in the flesh that we are living in. But I feel like I have finally started to walk to path to freedom and forgiveness.
