Forging Forgiveness (Part 1)

Part one:

Can we be honest, forgiveness is one of the most difficult things that we are asked to do. Whether we are asked to forgive a family member who has hurt us, or we are asked to forgive a friend or former friend due to an offense that was caused.
If we were truly being honest with ourselves, we would never forgive the person that hurt or offended us. We would ignore the problem. We would never truthfully discuss the offense; it would only be buried in an internal graveyard where we keep all of our personal demons and skeletons at bay.
  I can say that this is all too real for me. In recent months God has placed one person on my heart: my father. Let’s face the facts, my father and I have not always had the best relationship over the years. From missing large chunks of my childhood to not being able to relate to me throughout my teen years extending to my adult life, my father and I just never truly connected.
Due to these major events, I have developed animosity and anger towards my father, which has been burning in my chest for many years. Just when I thought these issues were healed wounds and I had moved on, I have had to come to the agreement that the wound is still agape and yet to be healed.
The time for healing is now….
In order to fully heal these wounds and forgive my father, I need to hand the pain that I’ve carried for so long over to my God. Through that, healing will be evident.

Consider the source
Here’s what I’ve realized, you can’t heal from your past until you take the time to truly understand your pain. I’m not talking about just being able to discuss your shortcomings, but digging deep into the wound, discovering the root of the issue of the shortcoming.
This is what I’ve had to do. For every issue that I carry, for every layer of unforgiving thick skin, I need to be able to identify the source in order to allow healing to occur. As I searched my heart, I found three major topics that I discovered that require work in order to fully forgive my father and heal my heart.

1. Feeling of Insignificance: Everybody wants to be important to the people around them. I know that it’s true for me. The truth is, through the majority of my childhood and into my adolescence, I never actually felt important to many people.  To most that doesn’t seem to matter as long as you feel significant to your family and loved ones, yet the unfortunate truth is that I never felt significant when it came to my family. And for some reason it showed the most with my father. When it came to my mother I knew that I was important to her, regardless of the upbringing that she provided me and my older siblings with, which involved constantly moving, living in sketching living environments and dealing with a lack of food and other resources. Yet, for some reason when I search for my insignificance, the only face I can picture is my father’s. I moved in with my father right before my tenth birthday. My father always worked hard and provided for his children, yet he never took the time to make me feel significant to his family. On the contrary, it seems that he often worked hard to make me feel insignificant and unimportant. Often my father used words against me that cut deep, which in the developmental stage where I was so influential, those words cut even deeper. Many of them I can still feel today.      
    
   
2. Feeling of insecurity: A family unit was created to make the smaller and younger members of the family feel secure and safe, a place where they can develop and grow into outstanding and responsible adults. On the outside, living with my father, I had all of those things. Yet, inside my heart I felt insecure and outcast. Often this comes with growing up, but most adolescence grow out of the feeling of being an outcast. For some reason, I never felt secure.  Within the confines of my father’s house, I only felt more insecure of who I am and what my purpose was. I searched for a secure home. I searched for a secure place to grow and develop. Yet, for some reason, I never felt comfortable talking to my father. I was never secure enough to be myself. I often hid who I actually was in order to protect myself. Due to me hiding my thoughts and feelings with my family, I developed thick walls of protection around my heart.  This sense of insecurity still lingers in my heart.  
    
    
   
3. Feeling of inferiority: As one grows and becomes secure in themselves, they learn more about their purpose in life. Due to them finding their purpose, they work hard and they develop a sense of self value. When a fully-developed person measures up to the world around them, they see themselves as equal to the rest. An under-developed person often finds themselves feeling inferior to the friends, family and acquaintances around them. Unfortunately, this is where I often find myself.  Due to the fact that I grew up feeling insecure and insignificant, my self-value has diminished to close to nothing. When I’m around my peers at a job or peers who are a little further along in their life, I feel inferior, less than. I discovered that through my childhood and adolescence compliments were scarce, or absent entirely. Yet, my friends were able to receive a multitude of compliments from the members of my father’s house. I felt less than.    

   As the reader may be able to see, my father’s words impacted me deeper than I understood in my younger years. As a teen I knew that I didn’t like the way I was treated by my father, but I never knew that I would carry those words with me for nearly fifteen years. Those words would form my opinion of myself, which in turn would affect my adult life.

My Christian Call
At the age of nineteen I gave my life to Christ. I accepted that through the blood of Jesus, I was given a new life. Over the last eleven years, I have grown into a better man. I have been given the opportunity to share my faith with friends, family members, and even strangers. I have walked away from my relationship with God and I found my way back to Jesus.
Over the years God has challenged me to step out in faith in many ways; yet, forgiving my father has been the most challenging. First of all, God spoke to my heart about this situation years ago. To be honest, I thought I had dealt with the bitterness that I carried. I thought I had forgiven my father. I guess I was wrong.
 Here I am again, the Holy Spirit urging me to forgive my father for his shortcomings and mistakes. This time I will do it properly and fully. I will pray for my father daily, asking God to transform my heart, to see my father as a man who works hard to provide for his children, a man who needs Jesus just as much as I do.