Thank You Mom

Posted by secondsamuel on May 08, 2008 07:42

When I think back on my life as a child through the teen years, I can’t remember that many good things. Most of my child hood I lived in terrible fear of my father. He passed away on Labor Day 2003. My dad was a very mean man, at least he was to his family, but in all other aspects and as it appeared to other people , my dad was a saint. He was a deacon in the Baptist church we attended, and he portrayed the image of an upstanding Christian man in the community and a small percentage of the time he was even nice to us. There was a dark side of my father that few truly understand other than myself. He used to beat my mother without relent, sometimes drawing blood, sometimes we even had to take her to the emergency room where every one of us would lie about the cause of her injuries. The typical excuse was that she fell down the stairs in our house. Even after I had grown and left home to be on my own, the beatings still continued until one time I was visiting my mom while my dad was off to a radio club function. I found her bruised and paranoid. It made me sick to my stomach. I took action and forced my mother to go away to her sister’s house in Kannapolis, NC, my ant Sue. I returned to Anderson and waited on the inevitable. Finally my dad called me looking for my mom and I told him what was going on and that she would not be coming back until he admitted himself to a mental health institution. To make a long story short my father finally relented and went to a mental health facility and went through shock treatment, and other forms of therapy. Shortly after being released from a six week long stay my dad returned to his old ways of the mental and physical abuse of my mother. Not too long after that my mom decided she’d had enough and clobbered my dad in the head with a huge iron skillet. After all those years of abuse she finally fought back. This slowed my dad’s abusive behavior but it didn’t stop. He contracted “hepatitis C” years later from a blood transfusion and the disease finally ended his life. Before my dad died while on his death bed I confronted him about all the abuse that he had administered to my mom and the rest of his family. I told him that I forgive him. I think my dad told me he was sorry but I have never truly believed he was sorry. He was so full of pride. I do pray that he found peace with God.

It has always puzzled me why my mom tolerated this kind of treatment for so long. Why didn’t she just leave? I asked her this same question not too long ago. Her answer goes something like this; back in those days there were no shelters for battered women and their children. She had no where to go. She had no money. She was afraid for her children and afraid for her life because he would have probably just hunted her down and beat her to within an inch of her life if not kill her. Her fear was what would happen to her children. When I think about it I can understand why my mom did what she did. I also think that she truly loved my dad and she saw beyond all of his misgivings. I can understand that too.

Well after living through all that drama for 17 years my dad found a way to get rid of me by signing me into the United States Navy. After 18 months I talked them into letting me go. I was home sick for my new wife and I was not cut out for the Navy life. I am going to fast-forward a few years and get to the point of my story. I am 55 years old. I am happily married to my 5^th wife. I was saved when I was 13 and I am still saved. I have been in and out of jail a shameful number of times, mostly alcohol related and domestic abuse. For years I used my childhood as an excuse before God, for all the trouble I’ve been in. I am currently disabled and so far in debt that I can’t even think about it, but I am alive, free, and happy thanks to my “Mom”.

You ask; How can you thank your mom after all you’ve been through? I’ll tell you why. I don’t believe there has been one single night go by that my mother has not fervently prayed for me. Even through those years when she was under such constant tyranny, I don’t think she failed to pray. I believe in a mother’s intuition. Every time I have been in trouble, or in pain, or lonely, or on the run, my mother has known it within her spirit. I believe to this day if it were not for my mother’s prayers, I would either be in prison or in the grave.. What a blessing it is to have a praying mom praying for me on a daily basis.

Thank you mom for enduring all the abuse that was dealt to you by my father. Thank you for all the sleepless nights that I put you through. Thank you for not giving up on me when I have been so unworthy. Thank you for all the times when you spoke up on my behalf. Thank you for blackberry jam, lemon cherry pie, and the best home-grown tomatoes in the nation and thank you for peeling those tomatoes for our dinning pleasure. And let’s not forget chowchow and doodle soup. Thank you for those nights when I crawled into my bedroom to drunk to remember how I got there and you didn’t even tell my father. Thank you for all the financial help you have so graciously given through the years. Thank you for all the advice I never followed. Thank you for encouragement. Thank you for giving me a big sister I could cling to and a little brother I could pick on. Thank you for clean clothes, fresh bed sheets, and a clean house to live in when I was too young to appreciate it. Mom, I could fill up page after page with all the things that you have done that I would thank you for but there is one single thing that stands out from all the other wonderful things you have done through all the years, MOM, THANK YOU FOR PRAYING FOR ME.

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