Parent’s are such a blessing from God; I know growing up I didn’t always believe that. Like most kids, I would fight with my parents and didn’t understand half of the decisions that they would make for our family. I love my parents. They are the most amazing, hard working parents in the world and they have gone to hell and back raising 5 kids, pastoring a church for the pass 26 years, and working a secular job to provide for our family.
To be honest, I haven’t made it easy on my parents. They have dealt with a lot of my problems and have been hurt by a lot of things that I have done in my past, before reconciling my relationship with God.
About 4 years ago I was living a really toxic life. I was doing drugs and doing anything to find my next fix. I was self harming and I had even attempted to end my life. While all of this was happening, I was making sure to hide it all from my parents and I become an expert at hiding it all. I became such an expert at hiding this life that people would come and ask how they could hide there addiction from their loved ones.
But even when you try to hide addiction or pain, there will come a time where everything will come out into the light and at the end of the day I wasn’t much of an expert…and one night, my parents found it all. They knew that there was something going on so they took a look into my room and found EVERYTHING: The drugs, alcohol, and even cigarettes.
I know I had broken their heart, but I was so deep into this life that I didn’t care about anything anymore. When they confronted me, I laughed and told them hateful things. Honestly, there is not a moment that goes by that I don’t wish I could take it all back…
However, God started working on my heart and two years ago I started the process of leaving that life behind. Although I had a relationship with God, I knew I had lost my parent’s trust and respect. I knew it would be a process that would take time for them to trust me again but I was ready to start the healing process.
It has been a journey of earning their trust and showing them that I’m not the person I was before. I have started being vulnerable with them, open about my walk with God, and going to them when I’m struggling with temptation of going back to drugs. It hasn’t been easy letting them see me at my lowest and being vulnerable with them but I’m so grateful for it.
Being on the Race there are times when God brings things from our past that we need to process and although they are hard, we can either run away or trust God to bring us through it. That is where I found myself this past week. God started to bring one of the hardest moments of my past to light. I had been avoiding processing this moment for the past 8 months and it finally caught up to me. Although it was a hard and full of tears, the freedom and joy that came at the end was worth the process.
Last night I felt like calling my parents to see how they were doing. As we talked, I felt the Lord telling me to share with them the new found freedom I had found from letting God into that area of my life. The conversation I had with my parents last night is what led me to write this blog. You see looking back at my relationship with my parents, I would have never been able to be so vulnerable with them. But here I was sharing with them this great victory. Letting them know that God had finally answered a prayer in showing me where He was in the midst of these hard moments. My parents rejoiced with me and celebrated the freedom God had walked me in.
They are incredible parents and I am so grateful for their unwavering love and forgiveness. They have shown me how prayer is such a powerful tool and how to exemplify God’s redemptive love, here on earth.
