What We Can't Take Back, Give to God

Forgiving Ourselves, the Elusive Element

I have been in thought lately because the leaves have changed. When the air gets cooler and the days get shorter, my mind often wanders back to my senior year of highschool. This was a time in my life when I was sustained by the Creator's Holy Spirit. It was also the time that I developed a grudge against myself that took years to heal. I am sharing about it now, for a young man that I know is in the dregs of life and needs to see what can happen if we don't forgive ourselves. The unforgiveness I had for myself, nearly cost me everything.

In order to help you understand my life as a teen I have to disclose the reality of my world back then. I was the second oldest child of four. My parents had divorced four years prior. My older sister had moved to Flint for work, and my dad worked about 70 hours a week. He was a full time bus driver and had to do alot of field trips and sports events to help us get by. Our home had been destroyed in the summer of 95 by a wind shear, two months before my senior year. Our belongings were soaked from the rain so the effects were much like that of a flood. While we were able to do some initial damage repair, the majority of the west half of the house was not insulated in full before winter. There was only 3/4 of the house covered with a roof, even though the walls were framed in. While my friends worried about prom, senior pictures and parties. I was worried about the kids at home with me, my dad who was working into a stupor on everything, and our house.

My senior year was not as bad as many years of school in some ways because I knew that I would soon be free of the many people who had made fun of me in years past. I had an easier work load because I had not taken as many credit hours.  There was drama and marching band to enjoy, even if being at home was hard, especially when the cold set in.

The first few weeks of school went well, I stayed with my friend Angie  and her family while my Dad worked to close in part of the house after work each day.  When I was able to come home, Dad gifted me with his old room that had not been damaged in the storm. He moved into a smaller room that was in the repaired part, not having carpet and painted walls didn't bother him. While it was nice to have a big room, I had noticed that I had a bit of pain in my foot between my toes moving my stuff in, and it got to be a bother fast. When I walked it pinched and caused pain to shoot all over my foot. My doctor found a place that had infection from a planters wort, and he opened it up that day to clean it up and relieve the pain. Before he finished he discovered two more spots on the bottom and treated those as well. The next week I had to get my wisdom teeth out, all four of them were still beneath the gum line. I had a lot of stitches and the whole process did not go well. Dad begged me to rest and stay in bed, but I only did for 3 days because I wanted to be in the homecoming parade one last time. That cost me more than I would have ever imagined.

I lost stitches too soon and caught dry socket. The infection that began in my face spread to all the places that had been healing from the week before. By the end of October, my face was swollen, I limped, and my house was getting very cold. I slept very little at night because of cold and pain. Even though Dad tried to insulate and close places up, he was working a huge load of hours. The living room of my house was laterally outside, with no roof over it. The furnace ran almost non stop, but it did little to really heat the house.


During this time in my life, I had a very close friendship with a classmate. We had become very close friends through a mutual friend, and we had decided to take French 3 together as a way to spend time hanging out. It was an independent study class and we were allowed to go to the library. The last day that I saw my friend alive, I had been back to school for the longest stretch that I had been since I had my teeth taken out.

 I was exhausted, and too embarrassed to admit that my life was really hard. Often when my friends had shared their troubles I took on the part of an empathetic mother. By this time in my life I never asked my dad much, because I already knew that doing something stupid could hurt the kids or I. doing anything that cost money meant not enough for food, so I never did alot of the teenage stuff kids do. I cared more about having food and staying warm. I cared about my friends the way an aunt would. I often gave adult like advice, much to the distress of my friends, because I often saw the value of their parents side in an argument. My friend stated many times that he was unhappy about life and that he wanted to die, his moods bounced because he abused antihistamines and he was often two every different people in a day. In this era you have to know that it was not uncommon for kids to say that everyday as a "cool statement" they wanted to die. Metalica and Mega Death had glamorized dying and the dark world as cool.  This last day though, I was sick, exhausted and I told my friend that I really didn't care what he did, I was not in the mood to hear it. (I was so sick I had not picked up on the statement he made that day as a dire warning, he said"I want to go home and hang myself") I had done all I could do just to stay awake at school. That evening during drama practice, a classmate named Jill came into the auditorium and gave us the awful news. My first instinct was to call my friend's mom, because two of her children would need her to drive them home. I hurried to go pick her up. I then went to another friends house, and sat with his aunt for a while after my friends had been settled. I cried then for an hour, and figured after that I needed to care for all of my friends from that moment on. The next few days I stayed with them in the library for grief counseling "to help the others". My Dad's sister helped me shop for a suit to wear and my friend Brain took me to the funeral as I was in no shape to drive even though I refused to cry. I also had endured the loss of two long time friends in the church that week, and the death of a local child. His death was caused by drunk driving by the same man who had raped me at 14. (another thing I had just tucked away) While I know the Holy Spirit had given me strength and care, I neglected to see that though all of this I was still a kid who needed care. Even though I had been helping my dad parent, I was not one. In my conquest to help everyone, I was neglecting myself in a serous way. I took in all the grief and suffering, I stuffed it away along with all I had endured, and I began to do silly little things to make it all stop hurting. Like drugs and alcohol. My friends that knew I wasn't a partier, (after all I lectured them about their parents being right) were confused. Why would I do that stuff? I then spent 3 years acting a bit crazy after graduation. I brawled with men to prove a point, I drank whiskey and chased it with beer, or even worse tequila. I went driving drunk, and even tried to teach my little sister how to drive a stick shift, while I was fully snockered.

 I moved to the city and lived with my mom, and had completely ditched most of my high school friends, except Brian, who was more like family. He also had a habit of ignoring me when I acted stupid, so he was not hard to be around because he wasn't mad at me. His mom is like a mother to me. She and her husband Mike, often tried to reason with me that I had better chances of getting my life together because I knew a better way. I just kept ignoring them, because I did not want to admit I needed to change. It all finally came to a screeching halt when I had began to date my husband. I had a mysterious two week flu, that lasted nine months. It took God literally grabbing me by the face and saying "LOOK AT ME, FOR JUST A MOMENT, LOOK AT ME."I had to be clean and sober right then because I was going to be a mother. When I had to stop drinking, I had time to see God in something as I had time sober to look. I could see in a sober state that I was not to blame for all that I had been though. I should have asked others for help, and not taken on the responsibility of bearing everyone else's pain alone. Three years of my life were now spent, and I could not get anything from them at the time. What I got from them later was the knowledge that God had been present, but if I could have brought myself to deal with the fact that I needed to forgive myself for something that I had no control over, I would have been saved alot of grief. I should have cried and mourned for my friend along with the entire school. I couldn't do that then. Every year though, I go back to Riverside to see his head stone and pull weeds and keep things picked up (eyes full of tears). I see him every time I go to church at my congregation in Caro, I see his senior photo. One of his family members is still a part of a grief group that meets there. I have to confront my sadness for just a second, but I know now that the Holy Spirit is in constant care of us both. So my message for all today is that even if we cannot forgive our selves, we need to give our cares to God who can. By giving Him the situation, the load becomes bearable, and we are not forcing ourselves to carry something that is too heavy. When life happens, rather than try to internalize and be strong, be human and share. My prayers for you all this October season..Josie