FORGIVENESS

Lets Face it, we are not all the same.  Not for the lack of opportunity within our societies, but because we are all subject to Nurture.  Yes what you have stumbled upon is a Blog belonging to a chick of a shrink.  I have taken Psychology and even have a degree in it and a few years of clinical experience.  Yet, have decided for my own wellbeing and what I know about the field have declined to become licensed to treat in a private practice.  It’s all too indoctrinated even at such a young age in the progression of our social welfare states.  My point being that we are all so different and depending on our diagnosis have only a few choices for treatment. 

     Now where this is going I will not get to quickly so pay attention.  The photo above proves my argument that we as individuals cannot control the environment we are born in to, the ideas these people who are our nurturers have, nor the world that dictates how they behave. 

     Being bound and then tied to a radiator certainly would mess me up!  I presumably had a decent and fairly normal upbringing. My parents worked and we ate 3 meals a day and we even had Christmas and went on holidays.  My father and then my 2 stepfathers had a tendency to be drunkards one of them beating on my brother and myself .  Due to the consumption of too much alcohol, this substance consumed to excess causes people to behave differently than they normally would and often to the detriment of themselves and others. No one in my family drinks much my brother and I have a beer once in a while and I like to think I am a wine connoisseur and keep a few bottles of my favorites for special occasions.  No one gets drunk and no one entertains that way either. Most celebrations my mother will bring out the neer (or nearly beer) beer and my brother and I may slip out to the deck to enjoy a cold one.  Drunkenness to my family has become a sacrilege.  As an adult I had to realize that the Bible warns about being a drunkard and I had to accept that this was a way someone close to me managed a problem they had with alcohol. 

     We all sort of evolve to understand ourselves and the ways we relate to others in the world.  We adopt terminologies to describe ourselves such as introvert and extrovert, A Type and sanguine and so on. 

     My mother doesn’t remember me as a child and I surmise this is because I was the oldest and parenting with the oldest is vague in most parents as we are their trial run.  Most adapt per child and do or do not do what they did or did not do to those of us who had the privilege to be born first. 

I often see who I was, duplicated in my granddaughter, who is apparently very reminiscent of me. Amazingly not only in looks but actions. I do pity my mother and give her complete respect for not putting me up for adoption now that I have been enlightened.   Given whom she is and whom that little person was. 

My daughter is not fazed by the behaviors as she just keeps the girl busy.  Easy solution for her but obviously not in a home where children were not the focus and were expected to be well mannered and dutiful. 

I watch as mini-me careens off her bicycle to a pair of roller blades, hugs the dog as she passes almost ripping off his ear, then bypasses  the hole her father has dug in the yard for maintenance reasons, by jumping over it! On her way to the trampoline to frolic all with roller blades on! My son in law hardly notices. 

     The whole purpose and point of this writing is to move forward towards the subject of forgiveness.  I once had a pastor that related in a sermon, about when he was a child, would hide in his tree house. He would watch people for hours from this vantage point.

 I first thought how boyish climbing and playing in trees.  Then I thought how perhaps creepy, all the watching.  However, given who I thought he was and what kind of an upbringing he had we assume that kind of behavior was probably harmless.  Yet, again Ted Bundy also appeared to have normal childhood experiences until later when he began killing the animals he had once treated with kindness.  What is normal and what is not? What causes that switch to be flicked that makes someone display behaviors that are unacceptable within our norms of society?  We have determine that what goes on behind closed doors influences those kinds of choices and behaviors. The things we cannot see.  Yet, as a society we deal with the results.    

In psychology we study the reasons why people act out in antisocial ways. The unit is called Abnormal Personality Behaviors.  We really do not delve deeply into criminal behaviors all that much but cover it from the aspect of healthy family and societal interactions.  Many people are amazed by those that become predators and rape children and murder their mothers.   One psychologist called it the “Rogue Pod Member Syndrome” based on studies into rogue male Orcas, (killer whales that band together and form their own pods.) They begin to kill not only the females they would normally breed with, and  decimate seal populations brutally murdering them for fun.  This behavior causes them to be rejected from their pods which are family units established for life. Currently these studies are looking at the possibilities that these male Orcas behaviors are relatable to human male behaviors within our society. 

     I don't ask deep psychological questions about criminals because I its evil. That is what evil looks like that is how evil behaves.   Our prisons are full of people on Death Row that are evil.  Yet those that study the mind and the behaviors that ensue out of it are not in agreement to the reasoning’s behind such abnormal behaviors. Many dollars are spent on trying to see how the synapses in the brain fire and why some fire this way and others do not.  It’s all conjecture.  However, most of us do agree it has something to do with nature and nurture.  How we as individuals are taught to perceive the environment we live in, based on what we are taught by our nurturers. The age-old adage abounds in the world of psychology and actually is one of the first concepts we study, Nature VS Nurture.

 On one occasion I transported my sons friend home from a sleep over party, only to hear his plight about his mother when he did not want to get out of the car.  I was anxious to have him gone as in the little time he was with us, he ate us out of house and home, and peed the bed.  He begged me not to leave him. 

I asked where his mom or dad were as we sat in the car looking at his apartment concealed between a row of trees. He explained that his mother had cancer and had gotten this place to leave them. “Them” being his 2 other brothers and 3 little sisters one of which was pawing at his window of the car that very moment.  I watched as an older boy stumbled out of the apartment and peed on a tree. His counterpart in our car said,” he’s drunk.” Amazing to me as he could not have been more than 14.    I said, where is your mom?” he told me she was at her boyfriend’s house taking care of HE and HIS family.  I began to get the picture.  It all appeared to be true, the urchin like children, the appetite and the peeing the bed, the obviously drunken sibling, no supervision.  What was I to do?  I was not a social worker although, I was sure that at some point a social worker would become involved.   I got out  and escorted the children to the door. No adult was present.   I would like to say I took them all with me.  But I did not. I did call called Child Protective Services and comforted myself in knowing that one cannot simply take someone’s children.

What did ensue was the young man making a regular visit to our home, with an occasional sibling, and me feeding them.  Once in a while I got a call from the mother who always asked for the son first ignoring me, or in the third person asked me to relay a message to her “fcking stupid son.”

Finally,we moved out of the area and my son attended another school. But it doesn’t end there.  I met a bus driver who had been beaten by a student she was transporting. The state had the case and was prosecuting the boy on her behalf. It was this boy. I recognized his name.

 I never heard what resulted however, I was sure that he was on the road to incarceration, thus being a loss for our society. Had he had good parenting, been nurtured and allowed to blossom we can only speculate his successes in life. 

     Which leads me to the reason for this entry.  Forgiveness;

     I have a set of Bible verses in a decorative box next to my bed and when I arise I take one out and read it.  Over this last week there has been a theme running in my life.  I was led to read in St. Mark 11: 25, “and when ye stand praying forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses” This brought to mind 2 former friend’s of mine. One friend I had reason to disassociate with after many years of friendship due to her insensitivity and continual reminders of how little our friendship meant to her. The other an actual stalker I had learnt firsthand  from about abnormal personality disorders.   

The former I had been hurt by again and again often adjusting my life and sensibilities to reconcile with her.  Even when I perceived her as actually being mentally ill I kept lines of communication open with her. I believed that she had been terrorized and harassed into unrealities during a former job and place of residence.  She displayed paranoia’s and instability I recognized as being part of a psychotic disorder of some sort.  Upon denial of a statement she had made and that statement being so benign in nature yet, so adamantly protested by her I realized she was not herself or the person I had thought she was.  I was hurt.  I allowed the relationship end.  I forgot her but had not forgiven her.    

Realizing that someone close to you does not respect or cherish you or your friendship is disappointing.  She was not the person I had thought all this time she was.    

Yet who am I? How should I behave?  Should I be Someone who is comforting and kind and not just someone adding up wrongs and hurts of my own.  Just because I step up to the plate in life and she doesn’t, should it mean she is less and I am more?  No not necessarily I told myself, it simply means we are different.  What does it matter if she doesn’t live up to my expectations for her?  Why should I have any expectations at all? And whose eyes am I seeing through? My parents?  My psychological training?

Why not those of Jesus Christ?  I began to see that in the end nothing matters but how we behave. What matters is the behaviors that Christ modeled for us.  What WOULD Jesus Do?  Forgive her for being insensitive and hurting me? Forgive her for seeing me as who she thought I was or used to be prior to maturity and growth?   But also forgive her for not seeing that person I had become.

     It is human to see others in the finite on a single plain. Why do people need to conjecture past understanding others?  Why do people involve themselves in the lives of others and they have not even been invited?   For example, People at my job used to take their sick days to go to the doctor and run errands. They are earned days that if not used can be cashed out or carried forward.  The union does not determine how the days will be utilized.  They do not stipulate how the days need to be spent.   That’s an individual members own decision. The contracts assume that people are capable of making their own decisions. Yet, one time I took a sick day to take my son to the doctor and I ran into my supervisor at a neighborhood electronics store that was closing. He acted like he had caught me doing something wrong. He even asked me to prove that I had just come from the doctor with my child. I did, however, in my mind that’s was overstepping.  It was wrong of him to follow and confront me at the store.   It infringed upon my feelings of safety and privacy. His actions implied to me that rather than observing the rules set out by the union he would try to enforce his own interpretations of the rules upon me.   

     Some people might say that’s ok as it is a job and that is a supervisor. Yet, what is being observed there is singular thinking  denoted by one level plain of consideration.  My supervisor was not able to think past his ideas of what is right and wrong and did not consider me as an individual with rights able to make my own decisions.  Most people in our society do not have such thoughts and also cannot ascend thoughtfully. They just continue to assume about others and make judgements and create gossip. Loving kindness and thoughtful awareness allows us to give people the benefit of the doubt. 

I learned to practice this in deed as I consider others. This benefits not only my own peace of mind but others that I contend with in life. 

     The other friend was forced upon me. The relationship was not of my choosing.  My warning lights going off constantly to the words spoken and the kind soy behaviors I witnessed  The first time I had entered this woman’s home I knew something was wrong with her.  Food overflowed out of every nook and cranny. Boxes of rice piled under the kitchen table that looked as if everyone in her family had used them for foot rests. Under the children’s beds and in the bathrooms, first in available cupboards and then all around the rooms were stacked cans of various  foods.   The cupboards being so full they could not be closed. My surprise was probably written al over my face as she felt it necessary to explain herself.    Apparently she had known hunger as a child and never wanted her children to experience this.  Understandable right? 

Yet, as this friendship progressed more one sided than not, my sense of duty to the church family and my Christianity overshadowed my sensibilities.  After a while and some unusual events the relationship went   sour after she accused my husband, a mild man, of having shouted at her husband over their small group ministry issues. It was laughable to me as her accusations were preposterous as my husband would never say such things, it was completely fabricated.  It never happened.  Yet,  instead of backing off of us and letting it alone or making amends they continued full steam with more bizarre accusations until the group actually fell apart. Most of the members choosing not to attend  due to the lack of desire to experience the strange drama.  We left the church and actually began the group anew in another location without that couple and the already confused church leadership who kept trying to band us together.  

     Then years later after I had moved  to another part of the State, the whole saga forgotten, I was shopping in Wal-Mart.  This very same woman appeared and began to speak to me as if nothing had occurred   She gave me her number , what?  Seriously….As if I would be calling. 

Sadly her understanding of the events of the past were unlike mine.  I made a totally healthy decision and threw the number in the trash.   

    

     Fast-forward many more years.  I am a professional school bus driver while attending university. While parked at a school loading my kids this very woman gets on my bus! Again!  WOW! I had moved and taken a job over 300 miles away from both of our former neighborhoods.   I was in complete shock.  I made small talk and told her, “This is what I do.”  She smiled and left. Bewildered,  I consulted my faith to inquire how it was that this hell seems to be repeating itself again.    I never saw her again.  It was if she vanished.  I have since graduated and moved 4,000 miles away.  However, as I consider forgiveness I ask myself what in my heart have I harbored against another that might make me bound to bitterness? 
Considering these two people, Have I really forgiven them? What do I forgive them  for?  being abnormal or for being sick and remaining untreated in our ideological live and let live society?  For lying about me?  For chasing me around and harassing me?  Yes, all of the above. 

What I needed to learn is that forgiving is as much about helping myself as being righteous in Gods eyes. Those 2 people may not ever have a revelation or epiphany about me and what happened between us.  

Chances are they will behave towards others as they have towards me.   I have since learned that some personality disorders are not treatable even if the persons affected become aware that they are not well. 

However: Jesus Christ healed the sick and made the lame to walk and the blind to see.  We can see Christ’s example demonstrated by  his emissary Pope Francis’s as he embraces the horribly deformed and crippled to pray for them.  Is mental illness not the same thing?  Just because mental illness is not always visible is it not just as debilitating? WWJD? He would show mercy and forgive them. They do not know what they do.    “and when ye stand praying forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses” St. Mark 11: 25 Amen