the freedom will come
It’s been awhile since I’ve had a guest post, but today we are lucky to have an incredible entry from one of my readers who wishes to remain anonymous. This is one of the most raw and brutally honest pieces I have ever read. It’s a post about her painful history, the struggle to overcome, and the blessing that has forced her to become better. If you’d like to contribute a guest post, please read the guidelines and contact me. You can read the other guest posts by clicking on the personal stories link in the sidebar.
I had an angry father.
A very angry and silencing father.
He was large in size and in temperament. Growing up the force of my dad’s anger could almost be seen in the air. It stuffed near-spoken words back into my mouth, down my throat, and into the cells of my body. And there they rotted into insecurity, self-doubt, confusion and silence.
Always silence. Silent about my heart. My life and longings. My own passions. And when I stuck my heart out there once, it was mutilated beyond relational repair to this day.
For the most part I became an agreer. The lines were clearly drawn. They were written on his brow and when his eyes and forehead began to twist I became placid like a dog before it’s owner’s command.
Always silence. For years. Words on the tip of my tongue seeped upwards into my brain, sideways into my jaw and in that delicate unseeable connection between mind, body and emotions, I became sick.
These days the naming of the truth I was raised in is finally bringing understanding , health and a strength to release. To become. To separate. This is new for me. I am choosing it for the first time without remorse and with strength. And there is, as there always is, a reason for that.
You see I married a man with strength, but his is silent. And in his silence I exploded. And imploded for that matter. My matter literally did. Chronic depression. Endless pain. And verbal outbursts of anguish.
The protector I desired, the wall from that scary history and future of pain, the one I knew no words to navigate, I was denied. He was silent. His own wall. I was on my own.
And I was a trapped deer caught in barbed wire. The more I thrashed against these new confines, the more I bled. And the more he backed away like a scared tourist stumbling on unexpected wounded wildlife. I emitted primal screams of captivity. Loss. Ungrieved things I did not know. Pain and a complete and utter vulnerability.
And then she came.
We had become pregnant very early on in our marriage and in quick succession we lost several sweet babies we loved.
But babies I never wanted.
I was smart enough to know they would break me. But they came for other reasons and so did she.
The truth seer. My progeny. The one who could read me and tremble at my caged wrath. At my undealt with grieving. At my unpredictability. My swings from acute tenderness to devastating depression and the tightrope of rage in-between. An intuition far too sharpened for one so young. At times I was the frying pan sitting on the hot burner of history and the slightest bit of pain thrown on me could make me spit and sizzle.
And she became my nemesis. My downfall. My joy. She arrived with a key in hand but will not give it, as she is it.
They say to young mothers, we’ve all heard it, to savor the days our children are young. And for all intents and purposes we try very hard. We grab chubby cheeks in two hands and plant oodles of smashed kisses on their rosebud, wet mouths. We look and absorb into our very fiber the color, the depths of their eyes. We sit and read and hold and cuddle and play tea party and blocks and build train tracks. We bake cookies, let them dump cups of flour and stir the pancake mix all over the floor. We stamp play-doh molds and dress up and tie the umpteenth little shoe and then rub baby lotion on wet, bathed skin at the end of the day. And we pull their little bodies close and we smell that skin and close our eyes and long and long to be better. To become. To be. To savor.
But she is still here. Still young. And she waits because she cannot go anywhere. Nor can I. I can neither run nor banish. And in her waiting she has become angry. And I see it. I know it. She is caged and I am her master. I hold her key. I am her key.
And I am hell-bent on releasing her.
She. She alone at such a young age has become my greatest inspiration. I could not break free from an angry father. Can not be free even for my husband. And have never been free for myself.
But they say truth is freedom, right? And so I have begun.
I heard a saying once; “A harsh word stirs up wrath but a kind, a gentle word dissipates anger.”
I am trembling with the hope that I can say no to anger. To instead be gentle. Full of grace and not scorn. I have chosen – because I can do that I now see – to turn away, stop, and break generations of family patterns. It’s terrifying. Lonely. Exhausting. Sad. Call me simplistic, but I think saying no is the key to close those doors behind us. She has the key to open and I have the key to shut. Or better yet, she is the key to opening it and I am the key to finishing it. It’s just believing that it’s possible. Like ending alcohol addiction, you wonder, will it ever really go away? Can I really not be angry?
Saying no to silence. No to intrusions. No to people who have no business being in our lives. No to being so distracted that I can’t choose gentleness, choose patience. No to so many, many things. And thereby I am learning comes safety. Protection. Reality. Truth.
And me. I am emerging.
And thanks to my daughter, so is she. It will take time, no doubt. New set backs, new habits, new “no’s” – but I want to teach her to swim these waters. To feel the beauty of freedom. Freedom to choose gentleness, release, truth, freedom and the enjoyment that ensues from being yourself. From being loved.
I read an essay by the writer Ellen Gilchrest who is looking back on her life from the joy and freedom of being a very independent, well-traveled, accomplished writer, teacher and grandmother. She talks of the sacrifices she made and the ones she didn’t.
She says: “One of the reasons I am happy now is that I did the work I had always dreamed of doing. But I didn’t start doing it seriously and professionally until I was forty years old.… In the end happiness is always a balance. I hope the young women of our fortunate world find ways to balance their young lives. I hope they learn to rejoice and wait.”
It’s that last sentence that struck me through the heart. Wait. To learn to rejoice and wait. Therein is the hope for me. It is something I can learn. Not a genetically-doomed destiny. To be patient with me is to be patient with her. The freedom will come. The gentle words that put away anger will seep, seep through seams of hundreds of daily choices and many, many times of turning away.
God truly gives us the gifts we don’t even know we need. See, this tiny angel, this little fiery beauty, this seer became my mirror.
And I’ll be damned – most literally – if I don’t become hers. Because she is lovely. And due to her, slowly my loveliness comes softly. Gently. Kindly. With grace. My choices unfold into freedom. My daughter - you have come to me as the most inspiring woman I’ve known. We will journey together and we will wait for this new family of ours to bloom. Thank you, sweet girl. I love you.
— Anonymous
Before I learned how to design blogs (and I use the term “learned” very loosely here, since I know how to do about five things in html and the rest I make my husband help me with) I used my creative juices to paint. I haven’t made anything in a while, but I used to keep myself busy making custom name and letter prints. On the left is a 5″x7″ painted canvas with a wooden letter glued on top. My girls each have one of these with the first letter of their name hanging on their bedroom door. I love making these for gifts, and I even had a few people pay me to create something unique for their child. Here are a couple of the canvases I was paid to paint: 
