Hurt

[Elder-Shawn Denise Briscoe]

As the proud mother of 2 wonderful children who are now adults and the grandmother of 1. I have experienced great joy and pain of motherhood. It’s apart of the experience. I must admit; I was one of those parents who would say “you don’t get an instruction manual when you birth a child.” How very wrong I was and not only that but I spent time around people who I considered to be more mature in the CHRISTian walk than I. They too agreed that there is no manual that is given to raise a child. But there is; it’s called the Bible. Had I been encouraged to seek out scriptures to help me with circumstances especially when I was a mother for the first time; I would have gotten some wise instruction. Most to all first time parents make drastic mistakes with their child and if or when they have another; the next child is dealt with a little differently because you have learned how to handle this familiar situation. Well; it has very recently come to my knowledge that my oldest child is very angry and hurt by things that I had done in his childhood. Things that I thought were helpful to him and made sense to me. For instance, I was taught that a woman’s husband is to come first no matter what. Being a hopeful romantic and head over hills in like; which I thought was love and full of low self esteem. I did what I could to make my husband happy. Mistake number 1, you can’t make another person happy; they either are or they aren’t. Trying to please my husband and failing became stressful to me. It caused me to shout at my son for no apparent reason. Mistake number 2, was that unbeknown to me; my son did not want to spend 5 days a week sleeping at his grandmother’s for school. But he did not feel comfortable enough to express that to me. He would have preferred getting up early and having me take him to his grandmother’s for school. Mistake number 3, living in an abusive marriage; I should have taken my son, left and been done with it. But for 20 years I tried to make it work and all it did to my son was damage his outlook. Now he’s nearly 30 and I'm just getting small glimpses into the pain I caused my son because of my warped sense of thinking. He has built a huge wall around his heart, his perception to life’s relationships with others are damaged. He’s angry and hurt but right now he will not admit it. I see manipulation a foot but right now I can’t sit him down long enough for him to dissect his perception as to what has taken place in our lives. He has no concept of the love that I have for him and that I still have that mother’s fight for him flowing through my being. It’s just that now; I'm wiser, I know how to wait on GOD. I know that GOD’s Word is true and will not return void. I know that the bowels of hell want to destroy my children because they have the call of greatness on their lives. I know that all and every promise given to me by GOD is mine and will manifest them in the proper time in the natural. GOD takes my hurt and rubs HIS balm on them and the sting of the pain subsides. Eventually the hurt that I feel for my son’s emotional state of being will go away. Because I know that GOD will step in and heal my son and deliver him from all that disgust; all that anger; all that confusion; all that hurt. I know that GOD will do this for my son because GOD did it for me.