"I wish you'd never been born!"
I was 12. She was really angry. It was last in a line of several days' worth of her being mad at me for a variety of reasons, so I suppose it sort of built up. I don't really know at this point in my life, being an adult if she really said those words. That is what I remember hearing. Loud and clear they were then and loud and clear they will always echo in my heart. However, the adult in me does know that there are always three sides to every story...mine, hers and the truth. So I suppose I could have misheard my mother. I know I have spent years wishing I had but never really knowing and never having the nerve to ask.
I share this story to show more of how the echoes of words and hurt affect how we form our own life. Our hurts, our wounds are our barriers we place to protect us from the world around us, to keep us safe from other hurts, from other hurts. We dig ourselves deeper into ourselves or away from others to keep from having to deal with the outside world. Sometimes we will plant our feet firmly and pretend we are happy when we know we are not. We try to fool our world around us, giving them the impression that we are "where we want to be" but all the time we know we want more but are afraid. But how do we move for here?
It took me quite a lot of years to move on from these echoes that have planted me firmly in one place for too long. They still sting and slap and try to hold me still in my steps but sharing the "secret" makes it not feel like it has such a hold on me. Forgiving my mother, just because I can, has also allowed me to get past my own echoes, past my history, to enable me to move on so I can begin to realize that I am more than my past. I am NOT what someone thinks I am. I am who and what I want to be. I am stronger than the weak past. I am a person of worth and I can serve my God with the best of anyone. I can and will look forward, not backward, not in the past. For that is one place we tend to find ourselves all too often dwelling when we find ourselves fearful and frozen instead of moving, and motivated.
I once received a prophetic word from a Pastor: "Your future will not be determined by your past." I've held onto that word even today and speak it out loud when events try to press in to the contrary. The words of hurt, pain and rage spoken over my life were like bricks, placed one upon another around my heart and unforgiveness was the mortar that sealed me in to my personal prison. Thanks be to the inner workings of the Holy Spirit who is helping me escape this fortress, removing one brick at a time...
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