This New Perspective

“And this is a healing song. And I’ve got a heart that fails. But love is pushing me along.”  Bebo Norman


I feel like I’m definitely in the healing phase of this whole thing. It’s been an interesting stage of life for me these last few months. It’s been a time of facing past hurts head on. Sometimes painful, but sometimes I found the fear of the pain to be worse than the actual pain. Still not fun to go through, but I’m enjoying the fruits of the labor now. The peace that comes with the healing has been amazing.

I thought that my issues were stemming from the guilt and shame I had related to things I had done. Things that few people knew about. Things that made me a bad person. I was told that once I was able to talk about those things, own up to them, then they wouldn’t have the power of guilt and shame over me anymore. It was true. As painful as it was, I owned them. I talked about them. I cried, I felt bad for having to admit them. And for a little while, I started to feel better. But then I found myself back in the shoes of my young self, with these hurts so deep that I didn't know how to express them.

See, those things I did served a purpose for me. They were my way to make the inside pain match the outside. When I was carrying around those burdens and wanting to tell people about them, it was my way of giving a voice to my inside pain. And when I talked about them, and they weren’t powerful anymore, I was left with this inside pain that didn’t have a voice.

The worst thing about growing up with the inside pain I had was the number of times I had people dismiss my pain. So many times people said “Of course your parents love you.” or “He didn’t mean it. All brothers do that.” or “I’m sure that’s not really how it happened.” It stings right now as I type it. I was hurting and nobody around me thought my hurt was valid. So I made the outside match the inside.

When I can take myself all the way back to the beginning of the story, and acknowledge where the hurts came from, it is healing. It’s healing to know that I have a voice now. As much as people may not want to hear it, my parents did a terrible job with me when I was little. They did not love or nurture me in a way that was meaningful to me. They did not build me up. By a very young age I felt like I had to earn their love and affection by not bothering them and by doing things they liked, like being smart. At a very young age, my idea of how to earn love was screwed up. And when they knew about the abuse I endured, and they did nothing to stop it, it further cemented the idea that I was not worth rescuing. And that groundwork of no self-worth and having to earn love and always seeking a rescuer set the stage for a horrific next couple of decades.

Even now, more than two decades later, I have to constantly remind myself what I know to be true is not really the way it’s supposed to be. Love is supposed to be easy. Friends and family are supposed to care when you’re hurting. And even though I still want it, the days of me needing to be rescued are gone. So I’m at a point where I’m grieving for the lost days. Grieving the happy childhood and carefree teenage years that I didn’t have. And I have to be careful because part of my grieving is wanting to recreate. But I understand that at this stage in my life, doing something to create a scenario where I need to be rescued can have extremely detrimental effects on my kids and my marriage. So I’m not going to get what I wanted back then. And that hurts. And sucks. And is a healing thought.

So this is the part where I just hang out and dance with the awkward dance partner of grief. Phil described it as leading one way when you think you’re going another, or coming back when you think it’s gone. So I’m just hanging out here. Trying to enjoy the peace and grace that I can feel welling up. I’m still sad that things didn’t go how they should. But at the same time I’m overwhelmed with the understanding that things are way better than they logically should be. And this is a healing song.