Forgiveness is tough...

[musikismylife]

I was physically abused as a child. Now I am 14 and I still have to live with my abuser, my mom. She dosen't seem to care that she did anything wrong, she has never apologized. The abuse only stopped after child and family services got involved. She seems to blame me. I got diagnosed with a mood disorder when i was 9 or 10. I misbehaved a lot and had huge mood swings. My mom says she just couldn't cope... thats what led to the abuse. I feel guilty for that... I know I should have behaved more. At the same time I feel angry at my mom. I know that God says we must forgive to be forgiven, but I'm finding that really hard. I'm also finding it hard to respect and obey my mom. Especially because she never layed a hand on my sister. It's a very a good thing that my sister never got hurt, but why me? She has never told me why...
Well, I think thats the end of my vent. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

 

[FaithfulWife]

musikismylife~

First, may I give you a ? I'm sorry to hear that you have had to endure physical abuse from your mom, and that rather than taking personal responsibility, she is blaming you. You are a brave young person to survive and I want to commend you for that.

musik, when I was a younger person I went through exactly the same things you are going through. My mom is bipolar and every day she would physically abuse us in her moods until she was tired from it. I'm an old person now and have my own husband and family, but to this day she has never said she was sorry or accepted responsibility for it. She says it was "what she was told to do" or "what she learned" or "we needed to be obedient" or any number of things EXCEPT that she was the adult, we were children, and she should have been the more mature one in the situation to control herself!

Oh I struggled for YEARS (more like decades) with the forgiveness thing, and you know what I discovered? Forgiveness does not mean, "Act like nothing happened--they don't have to live with the consequences of their actions." It is an internal thing about ME letting go of anger and feelings of revenge or hurting her. It is about me living in a place of peace and caring--both about me and about her.

Caring for her does NOT mean, "You abused me and now I am going to do things the same so you can abuse me more." Nope. It also doesn't mean, "I love you so I'm going to let you get away with abusing me." Nope. It means that I care about myself and protect myself from the issues she refuses to face in herself--and it means that when I can and its safe, I still treat her with the dignity she deserves as a parent. See, what I also FINALLY figured out is that she was abused too and in her day and age the way they dealt with it was to stuff it, ignore it, "get over it", pretend it didn't happen, etc. (which as you know does NOT work!). So she was broken in some parts of her mind and did the best she could. It was very harmful to me but she is actually just as harmed as I was. The beauty is that I faced my issues and faced my anger over the abuse--I faced the fear and the pain--and *I* have had the enormous blessing of recovering. She hasn't. She still wallows in it and won't face it.

Dear musik, you can survive this. That is your goal--survive. If you have a school-based counselor at your school, privately ask for some time with them. If you don't maybe we can talk about other options. But you CAN survive and even oddly enough thrive! And in the end forgiveness is about you setting yourself free to live in peace and love--not about "letting her get away with it." Okay?

You can always PM me if you'd like to ask more personal questions.



~FaithfulWife

 

[musikismylife]

Thank you so much for taking the time to write all that. It really helps to know that someone else has gone through the same thing and is now thriving. I will try my best to take your advice on the forgiveness thing. But, again, thanks for your support!

 

[Carolyn H]

Musik,
I have found that un-forgiveness is like being in a prison of our own making. It is a dark place and we wear chains of our own making.
Jesus wants to set the captives free. And his whole ministry was about forgiveness.

I have had to learn about forgiveness. It was a very hard lesson to learn, it didn't happen over night. Forgiveness helped my wounds to heal.

I am praying for you

Carolyn