LESSON LEARNED
May 27, 2010; 2:15 a.m.
The reason for this letter is to thank everyone for their prayers and to explain my request for prayer, to relate the trial I've been going through and to help you experience the complete and total healing your prayers helped to bring about. I know this will never be a struggle for me ever again!
The past month or so I've been going through much turmoil and struggle. The biggest part of this struggle is linked to the past and the story my mother told me about my birth, and the chain of events following my birth.
I was told at the age of about 12 that my real dad had a girlfriend when he returned from the war and that he was looking for a way out of the marriage. My mother invented a secret admirer to make him jealous and that when I came to being he used my birth as an excuse to get out of the marriage and that he threatened to kill me, her and the doctor if she gave me his name. So his best friend allowed her to use his name on my birth certificate.
I found this news at this time very devastating because my older sister and I had a discussion a week or so earlier trying to understand our mother and how to cope with her alcoholism and abuse. Our mother became very violent and abusive under the influence of alcohol. My sister explained to me how much our mother had loved our dad and my sister felt at the time that this brought on her drinking. She said we needed to understand that her aloholism was a sickness.
So a week or two later when my mother told me the story of my birth it was like someone hit me with a baseball bat. My reaction was..."It's all my fault, if I'd never been born all this would never have happened. They wouldn't have gotten divorced, momy wouldn't have started drinking, there would have been no fire, life in the orphanage, a killing, fighting day and night, my sisters and brothers wouldn't get beatings or chased with a butcher knife and we wouldn't have to baracade our bedroom doors or take our little sisters punishements to keep our mother from accidently killing her.
All this ran through my mind and my solution to the problem was suicide. If my mother didn't have to see my face everyday I wouldn't be a reminder of her pain and she'd quit drinking and stop hurting everyone. I knew everyone would be better off without me. So I tried to kill myself, but God intervened through my brother, Terry.
After carrying this weight of guilt for 43 years I've come to find out through certain circumstances that what my mother told me that day was a complete and total lie! I was born ten months "AFTER" their divorce and he is not even my dad. She lied to everyone about who my dad was. I became so angry and hurt. The circumstances that brought this revelation also brought my brothers and sister a lot of painful memories as well and once again we had to deal with surpressing them.
My anger became so great I couldn't let it go. I was becoming very bitter. I was seeing my mother in a totally different light and it wasn't good. What a load to lay on a child! The guilt, the awful feeling of guilt for being born all those years. I was now set free from that guilt but the problem now was the fierce anger, bitterness and painful memories.
It was affecting me everyday. Someone would say something or I'd see something on t.v and just start crying. It begain to affect my family and my body. My brothers and sisters and I managed to paint a rose colored world and found a way to forgive our mother before, but I couln't this time, no way! She made wrong decisions and put the blame on me, a child!
As I was praying this evening I once again struggled to forgive and forget. There has been a distance between God and I and I know its beem my attitude. So I reasoned with Him. "God what's wrong with me? Maybe I'm not doing something I'm suppose to be doing?"
I've been trying to finish a book I started several years ago "Intercessor: How Can Jesus Possibly Know How I Feel? Based on Isaiah 53, the Gospels and present day experiences. But every time I work on it, it seems like I come under a major attack. Not to mention some of the chapters are hard because I have to go over events in my life and it is such a painful ordeal.
So in my prayer I went over this once again with God and told Him once again I will try to continue no matter what. Then tears welled up in my eyes and a lump in my throat as I tried to subdue them.
"God, how?" "How can I get over this, all the pain, all the cruelty; she lied God!" "She lied, how could she put all that shame and all that guilt on a child?" "HOW!?" Just then, in an instant, I saw Jesus as a baby lying in a manger.
Right there I was convicted of my sins that were laid upon Jesus. Those were MY sins lying in that manger, I had no right to point my finger at anyone else's sin. He carried the weight of MY sin all the way to the cross where He died for MY sins as well as for the worlds.
Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.
But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way;
And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
Isaiah 53:4-6 (NKJV)
What have I learned from all this? I have learned that sin, no matter what name you give it; adultery, fornication, lying, stealing, murder or not honoring the Sabbath, it is ALL sin and sin leads to destruction. It not only affects the person committing the act but it affects everyone around them even the innocent and sin does not affect just those of the present, but also of the future.
We need to teach our children and grandchildren about the consequences of our actions, there are good consequences and there are bad consequences, this is not taught anymore. And we need to be in constant prayer and ask God to help us make right decisions and to help us do His will and to obey His word. I ask this now for myself in Jesus name. AMEN
Love in Jesus,
Robin
