Being a Good Parent
I have a friend whom I met though work, he told me the following story…
When he was about 8-years old, his mom said she was going out to get a pizza. She never came back. She left him, and his two brothers. He said, at first, they wondered why she was so late coming back with dinner…had she had car trouble, was there a mix-up at the pizza parlor? As the night wore on, they worried that something bad had happened to her…had someone harmed her, kidnapped her…killed her?
She left him, and his two brothers, with a cruel and abusive father. As it neared bedtime, the boys worried sick about where their mother had disappeared; had been told by their heartless dad to quit their whining and to just go to bed. They laid awake the remainder of the night, hoping against hope that they would hear her come back home. She never did.
As that night wore on into the following days, their hope began to diminish that she would come back home to them. As the months wore on, they began to wonder what they had done that was so bad that their mother ran away without any warning… without even saying goodbye.
Their mom left them alone to face the wrath of their father. My friend said his father would leave them alone when he went off to the bar to get drunk. My friend told how they hid under the covers, shaking in fear, as they heard the front door open and “good old dad” began his torrent of vulgar, drunken rants. They hid under the covers, as dad entered their room and began swinging his belt at the bumps under the covers. That became their new "norm”…until each was old enough to go out on their own.
My friend and I were at lunch when he told me that story. He had just started working for me, and we were talking about growing up. I told him about me growing up in a very loving home…when he told me about his mom and dad. At first, I thought he was joking. He was always telling a joke…but I could see the pain in his eyes went all the way to his soul. Thirty plus years had done little to diminish that pain.
I wished at the time that I could have just reached across the table and placed my hand on his chest and healed his broken heart. But I don’t have that power…I am just a man. The only thing available to me is to ask God to heal my friend’s heart, and to give him the grace to forgive his parents for what they did to him and his brothers.
Abuse doesn’t just happen in the locker room at Penn State…it happens in homes too….by the very people who should be providing unconditional love and support.
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