The way back home
Good Friday is a day to remember why we are part of a fallen world always in need of repair.
A climb needs to start at a low point… we are broken, realizing and owning it, is our beginning and significant Starting Dot.
We are broken, or at least I am. I look at the world and attempt to climb to my objectives, and I keep falling and shamefully think that maybe there is something in me that feels I don’t deserve what I am aiming for. I have a clear vision of what I need to do with my life, yet in one way or another, I don’t break through.
I wonder if others feel the same way.
Something deep in me recognizes that it is not because the world is meager or scanty; instead, it is because I am not diligent enough or just do stupid and unproductive actions that at the end block my advancement. I then ask myself, “why do you sabotage yourself in small ways that eventually become micro failures that affect your life?”.
In many ways I have recognized my transgressions and shortcomings since my youth, I have written about them, recognized my faults, tried to make amends and forgive myself. Then why do I keep sabotaging my path and deny those who can benefit from my work and my heart’s unfolding? The only answer I can come up with is that I have forgiven the actions, the shortcomings but, deep inside, I feel broken and not worthy to do what I am aiming for.
I will attempt to do it again, give my best and recapitulate the darkest account of what I have really done that is contemptible and deceitful. I will own my worst and place it at the feet of my Creator, I will lower myself and hold nothing back.
Bullying and school
The farthest I can recall is bullying other kids in kindergarten. I was angry because I was undermined by my brother and felt resentful and took it out on other kids in the class. I harassed them, ripped their shirts, or pulled the girls’ skirts up and put insects under them and they would go running in panic. Other kids I believe were afraid I would do it to them, so they sided with me in my mischievousness in order to avoid it. Back then I formed a gang and would do unkind and hateful things to girls and boys alike. I would engage in fights regularly and was one of those kids no mother would like close to their child. It was so bad, I was even expelled for three days out of kindergarten and my dad whipped me with two leather belts.
The bullying kept going on until third grade, when two things stopped me. First, one of my close friends who was with me since Kindergarten, disagreed with me on something and I threatened him; he fell at my feet begging me not to hit him, reminding me he was my friend. I was afraid of who I was becoming to generate that response in someone I liked. The second was a fight I started and was really crushed. From then on, I stopped being a bully for a few years.
I don’t recall how it started, but in sixth grade there was a student who was introverted and soft spoken, and somehow it would be interpreted as what we presently call gay; back then it was a stigma. I was part of a group that did awful things to him: pulled his pants down, grabbed his butt in the hallway or even during class, we laughed at him and mimicked him in really nasty ways. In another school I went to, there were two other kids like him in class, I don’t recall, but maybe I started it. Other students followed the same bullying. We did shameful acts, and I am ashamed to say anymore.
I did take this to therapy when I was twenty, and have written in my journals about it and asked for forgiveness. Once I met one of the victims of our bullying when I was a grownup. I had a store in a shopping center and he came up to the store and said hi when he saw me. I was friendly, greeted him, and bid him to come for breakfast one morning, my treat. He did and I invited him to a really nice breakfast and spent some time with him. I wanted to say I was sorry, but I could not own my actions and look him in the eye and just said it, so I invited him to come again. A couple of weeks later he came back, and I did say I was truly sorry for what I had done, he said he didn’t remember it. Nevertheless, I gave him a hug and said it twice more. I could see I had done him damage; he never smiled and had a downcast personality. I was so ashamed that I contributed to that.
The relationship with my brother
There are just a couple of instances I can remember. When I was a toddler, I admired and looked up to him as my idol; he substituted a father-son bond. He was five years older than me, yet he was very dismissive of me and took every chance to make me feel like a misfit and a dork. Later in life I realized he was resentful of me and thought I had taken his place (normal syndrome of older brothers). Yet, when we were kids, I kept trying to please him and spend time with him. Obviously, sometimes we fought, but I always lose. I felt I was not good enough for him so I excelled so he would accept me.
Later when I was eighteen, we fought because his car was in the shop and I had my father’s car, he wanted me to give him the car and I stay at home without a ride; I told him “No way”. We ended up having it out physically. My mother’s car came into the garage while we were fighting, and he ran out to meet her, I don’t know what he said to her, but she came in shouting at me “what have you done to your brother”. I felt so unjustly treated that I screamed at the top of my lungs threatening to break his legs with a bat at night while he was sleeping. I really meant it and I fantasized about it for a couple of days, and he locked his bedroom door at night for a few days.
A couple of years later, he had this girlfriend I didn’t like, she and I had gotten into heated confrontations with her more than once. My mother really disliked her and back then I could not stand her. So, I took revenge on him. He would come home around 12:30 every other night and spend until daybreak having sex in his room; something I knew my mother would strongly disapprove of. So, I told my mom about it and she walked in one night and caught them in the act. My brother’s girlfriend was banned from coming to the house ever and I had my revenge.
Pexels @Pixabay
Other times I would tell my mom things my brother was doing to also get revenge on him. It wasn’t until I converted and began to seek God that I stopped and recognized why I had been so resentful of my brother as a young man. At one point I realized that what I wanted to change in me was the character traits I collected from my childhood while idolizing him, consciously or unconsciously.
School friendships
My best friend
At times I betrayed the confidence of friends, used the betrayal to advance my position, seem cool while making fun of others, cast a smoke curtain to hide my faults, or simply because I was smug. There was my best friend who once confided in me his fear of not being accepted in the group, he was candid and open about it. Some days later there was a group of us at a friend’s house, both of us were there, and they were talking about fears and what we were all afraid of. I jumped in and pointed out how he (I mentioned him by name) was afraid of being accepted by the group. Immediately I realized I had made a mistake. I only asked his forgiveness years later, and he said he didn’t remember it. Thank God, today we are still really good friends.
A Colombian “friend”
When I was in the States, finishing high school, I used to smoke weed. I had a Colombian friend who was good at finding “good stuff”, yet at eighteen he was a devious character, he was deceitful and a crook. Once we went to a contact of his and I gave him $50 and he another $50 to buy a couple of good ounces. Within a week, his friend was stalling us and said he had not gotten the stuff. My Colombian friend said to me he wasn’t going to give us back the money or was going to give us realy bad weed. He suggested we break into his pool house (which was the guy’s hangout) and see if we could get our money back.
Me and another friend of my Colombian friend, knowing full well no one would be at the house, went through the garage towards the pool house, and broke the glass door and got in. We had been there days before getting high, it was a really nice wooden pool house with a pool table, a nice HIFI stereo with speakers, a good collection of records and a TV with leather furniture. We trashed the place, like we were The Who on stage, let our rage out through it all, ripped the sofa and the pool table, broke the TV, lamps, a guitar and took the stereo, LPs and I can’t remember what else. We split the stuff, I got two boxes of LPs and the speakers.
The next morning, my Colombian friend and I went to visit our victim. There were a couple of police cars in the driveway, the police were all over the pool-house. There was glass everywhere, everything trashed, the mother was talking to the police. We played dumb and he told us everything that had happened. We said we were coming to see if he had gotten the weed. He said he hadn’t and searched inside his home and got us the $100. I literally felt like shit. When we left, in the car I said to my friend I was not going to keep any of the stuff we stole. He tried to convince me that he gave us the money because of what had happened, he would never have given us back the money or would have given us junk for the $100; but I felt I could not keep it.
I was swindled by my Colombian friend who wanted to make me his regular cohort; the next day I brought back to him everything I had taken from the heist. He ended up stealing from me a 450HP V8 Chevy engine. I believed I deserved it and it was a great failure, both having done the robbery and losing my high-performance engine because of my stupidity.
AnnieSpratt @Pixabay
Prom Night
For those who don’t know, in the States at the end of Senior Year, there is a party at the end of the academic year, called Prom Night. It is a big thing. The year before I had gone with my girlfriend who was a senior, but since then she had cheated on me with my work boss and in my senior year, I had no one to go with. There was this girl who was really fond of me, I think she was secretly in love with me. She invited me to go to the Prom with her and, since I didn’t have anyone to go with, I accepted.
There was a ritual to the whole thing, we were to be formally dressed and I was supposed to buy a flower corsage or boutonnière to put on her dress and she was to give me one for my suit lapel. I was to pick her up at her home and bring the flower arrangement and she would have mine; we would have our pictures taken by her family and off we went to the party that was to be in the Hilton Miami Downtown. We went to a private school and there was a lot of money to throw around and I was part of the top clan. One of my friends had an outrageous suite in the hotel and me and my date went in, there was liquor, cocaine, hashish and weed. The music was full blast, and we began to drink and have coke.
By the time we went down to the party, my date was tipsy. We had the pictures taken getting in. She kept drinking. At first, I was upset that she was completely drunk, I felt ashamed to have accepted her invitation. At one time she passed out and it wasn’t even 11pm. So, I left her at a table sleeping. I completely forgot about her. At dawn, I was with some friends at the beach, and someone asked me if I had come to the Prom with such girl. I said with disdain: “yes I did, but she got drunk and I dumped her”. And another friend said, “that’s wicked”. We all laughed.
That has been one of the worst behaviors in my life, I was unable or unwilling to assume someone else’s weakness because it reflected my inadequacies. There is a list of that, I had gone to the Prom with someone I did not want to, so I would not go alone; I was not kind to someone’s weakness because it reflected my own. The next school day she was ashamed to talk to me, she thought she had done wrong. I felt relieved, that was the last nail in the coffin of that story.
It goes on and on
Some time back I wrote of the worst transgression and most shameful act in my life in You cannot hide from the Light. For the sake of length, I will not keep enumerating my downhill mishaps, but they went on until my late twenties. Over thirty years ago, I chose with determination to live a life I could be proud of. That has had its challenges, but I stopped that tumbling down to hell when I was at the bottom. As the saying goes, if you are in a hole, stop digging.
My starting point to climb
Many times, in my past I have been a cheating, two-faced, irresponsible SOB. So, why in the world have I been so blessed and have been given so much? I don’t deserve it.
I don’t remember how many years I’ve been to therapy, attempted to straighten myself out, asked for forgiveness from those I wronged, and life has posed hard paths to make me atone. Yet not every time I’ve been receptive. I have attempted to own my misbehaviors, yet I recognize somehow, I have not let myself off the hook.
I have been asked by Jesus to follow him, and to this day I don’t know why. Recognizing the evil in me has been True Grace in my life.
NOT LOOKING BACK
I recognize I cling to this sense of unworthiness because I see who I’ve been. Yet I have been given a second chance. Maybe that is why for the last 20 years I have chosen to try and make an impact with my work, my writings, and my heart: I know it can be beautiful and we are the only obstacle for beauty and peace in our world. I will only be able to let go of who I’ve been by accepting who I can become and not look back.
I know one thing, if I feel thirst, there is a fountain source that I aspire to that can quench that thirst. You and I may have opposing views regarding Life: either it is harsh and confrontational, and opposes those that attempt to climb; or, it is benevolent, attempting at every turn to lead us higher and higher, focusing not on the wrongs, but on our heart’s true intent.
I choose the latter; I do recognize that all the pain I have lived through has been the consequence of the wrong I’ve done… not life’s harshness. Rather, Life has been kinder than I’ve deserved. It has been ever guiding me towards MY SOURCE.
I lay my shortcomings at God’s feet
I have no way of resolving my psyche
my past is my past.
I will not carry it with me anymore.I trust that He who has shown me kindness
and guided me to live more fully,
will be able to do what needs to be done with my past.I, broken as I am, aspire to bring a little heaven to this earth
in my humble attempt to take one step
towards completing this fallen humanity that I collaborate in creating.
Coming next…
Maybe you do not know, but I started writing in Spanish for my country men and women, felt the call to address the great void that our deeds and actions have created in Venezuela. So every month I will post an English article, but all other Wednesdays the article will be in Spanish.
Next article will be… El sacrificio correcto para que la vida florezca
[EN: The right sacrifice for life to flourish]
REMEMBER, you can have Chrome translate it if Spanish is not your mother language.