THORNTON WILDER (1897-1975) | Without your wounds where would your power be? It is your melancholy that makes your low voice tremble into the hearts of men and women. The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living. In Love’s service, only wounded soldiers can serve.
I’ve written and re-written this post several times. I’ve also seriously considered not posting it at all. There are two reasons for my reluctance. First, this is deeply personal and second, I have no idea how it will be received. But since you are reading these words, you already know the outcome of my internal debate. At the end of the day, I decided that God would not want me to waste my suffering on insecurity or the fear of being vulnerable. So…here we go.
The past holds enormous power over our lives…for better or worse.
My dad was born in 1929, and his eight siblings were raised by a single mom during the Great Depression. Both his father and step-father were violently abusive drunks and his eldest brother deserted the family when he was just three-years-old. By age five, he was already working to help support his mother (who worked three jobs). During World War II, his older brother Barney (whom he idolized) was killed in a freak accident playing basketball. These are just a few of the tragic events that shaped my dad’s life…and that would eventually impact my own.
After her first open heart surgery at age 14, my mom’s team of doctors advised her to check off as many boxes as she could on her bucket list, because she would never live to see 30. At age 34, she would be among the first people in the United States to receive a nuclear pacemaker. My mom never paid much attention to the “experts.” And I learned to do the same.
When I was eight, my mom kissed me goodnight, told me she loved me, and promised to make pancakes (my favorite) in the morning. I was awakened at around 2:30am by sirens echoing through the house. My mom had suffered a cardiac arrest and was taken to the hospital in a coma. Miraculously…three weeks later…and just one day before my dad had decided to pull the plug on her life-support…she woke up. Unfortunately, her brain had been deprived of oxygen for too long and she never recovered her former self. She was just 38 years old.
Every day I prayed the desperate prayers of an eight-year-old who just wanted his mom to be healed…but to no avail. (It was not until many years later that I realized how bitter I was with God for these unanswered prayers).
In a moment, my childhood had been forever altered. My dad and I were now my mom’s caretakers. We fed her, cleaned her up when she was incontinent, and made sure she couldn’t harm herself. This was our lives for 13 years, until my mom suffered another cardiac arrest during my senior year of college. She died in our arms as we administered CPR until the paramedics arrived.
But caring for my mom was just one of the burdens my dad carried for those 13 years. There were more. A lot more. He never spoke about them and it wasn’t until many years later that I found out what they were. My dad certainly wasn’t perfect, and he made a lot of mistakes…and those mistakes often took the form of verbal and physical abuse. As I grew older, the cumulative weight of my dad’s pain meant that I increasingly became the object of his anger. This fractured our relationship and it wasn’t long before resentment became bitterness that deepened into hatred.
I often contemplated killing my dad and then myself. My world grew darker and my choices more self-destructive. At the age of 25, I decided that the darkness needed to end and used all my money (I was pretty broke at the time) to buy a box of sleeping pills. Then I laid down on a park bench in Hollywood and prepared to die.
For the first time in a long time, I prayed. To this day, only God knows how I managed to get off the bench and stumble home. Though grateful for the reprieve, the bitterness toward God remained. But that was all about to change.
A few weeks after attempting suicide, my best friend Steve called to check in on me. After we chatted for a while, he suddenly asked me a question, “Didn’t your mom’s doctors tell her that she would never make it to 30?”
“Yes,” I replied, wondering where Steve was going with this.
“And she had her cardiac arrest when she was 38…eight years after all of her doctors said she would be dead?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Well…is it possible that God gave you eight years with her you never should have had?”
His question left me stunned. Though I was still deeply angry at God for not answering my prayers, it suddenly occurred to me that I could just as easily be grateful for the gift of those years with my mom. Years that the medical experts said she would never have.
The simple choice to give God the benefit of the doubt made all the difference. It took a few years, but after completing Grief Recovery, I forgave my dad and we were reconciled in 1996. Although the past was not forgotten…from that moment forward…my dad always had safe passage through my heart.
In 2016, I discovered that he had dementia and after several unsuccessful attempts, my wife and I finally managed to bring him to Texas. After staying with us the first month, my dad spent the last year of his life in an amazing memory care facility that was literally walking distance from our house.
It was such a blessing to see him almost every day and whenever I looked in his eyes, there were only two things in my heart…love and gratitude.
On Father’s Day, I wrote my dad a card, so he could re-read it if he forgot the words. My dad never got credit for all of the many sacrifices he made. Or the numerous obstacles he overcame. Or the burdens he carried without complaint. But I honored all of those things in the card I wrote him. I told him how much I admired him and how grateful I was to be his son. For only the second time in my entire life, my dad cried. After a moment, he barely managed to choke out the words, “My whole life has been worth it.”
My dad’s words expressed the sentiment of what every parent wants to be able to say about the meaning of their lives…and the legacy they want to leave behind for their children.
During the last year of his life, I was able to see God’s love for me shining through my dad’s eyes. God hadn’t just healed the pain in my heart, He had redeemed it.
For a long time, bitterness prevented me from using what I had…while I waited for what I wanted. Misery offered the illusion of avoiding personal responsibility or engaging in life…and it “justified” the pain I felt “entitled” to. Even though life can be hard and sometimes even cruel…I learned, in the truest way possible, that God is good.
Most importantly, I learned that God can redeem even the darkest of situations. I will be forever grateful that my suffering did not go to waste because it brought such profound meaning into the purpose that God laid upon my life.
Having compassion for my dad’s flaws as a parent helped me realize that he just did the best he could with what he knew. But it also prompted me to ask, “What if we could do better…because we knew better?”
This is the question drives my passion to help parents give their children a legacy of meaning and purpose.
That is my story…and no one tells any story but their own.