“Mommy, I got it this time!”
I tried to hand her my little scrap of paper, scribbled
on it my hopes of retrieving my father.
At that young age, I knew a license plate was traceable, but I didn’t
understand how it wouldn’t help me here.
My mother looked at me with sad eyes, hugged me, and
walked away. My scrap—my effort, and my only
hope—fell to the ground.
The memories I have of my childhood are scattered on a
scale between sadness and anger, happy moments flittering few and far in
between on the painful spectrum.
My brother and I ended many of our nights listening to
the shouts, screams and wails of our parents.
Peace only came when my father would peel out of the driveway and
disappear down the midnight street in a haze of grief and anger.
Sometimes he’d only be gone an hour, but other times he
could have been gone as long as a day. I
remember lying in bed, painfully waiting for the sound of a car passing on the street. Each time he left, I wondered if he would ever come back. Eventually he would, but his return only left me wondering
when he would leave again.
This question has carried itself over beyond the pains of my family, translating into every relationship. That piece of my
subdued heart always wondering, “When will he leave?”
One response [to abandonment] is
an inordinate sense of attachment to anybody who’s breathing, who will tell me
that I’m okay and will include me and connect to me. And you can see people roaming around, they
got their antenna up and they walk up and it’s like, ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ but
really what they want to say is, “Do you think I’m okay? Do you value me? Will you accept me?’ And you feel it, and, if you do say, ‘Yes, I
value you and accept you, it is like a whoop-whamo-joined-together, and all of
a sudden it’s like every moment, every day they’re calling, they’re e-mailing,
they’re not going anywhere, and they are joined at the hip to you and you’re
like, ‘What happened to you? I was just
trying to be nice to you and it’s like, whoa, we’re inseparable now, what’s the
deal with that?’ And inside for them it’s an issue of being abandoned and
searching out through their life, ‘Somebody say to me that you’re going to
stick with me!’”—Louie Giglio, Passion City Church
This is exactly who I was, and when ‘he’ didn’t stick with
me—when he left, the pangs of abandonment in my heart would be reinforced. And so every relationship I tried a little
bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more because I thought if I was just
enough, he wouldn’t leave.
There’s a reason none of my relationships have worked. It’s because my goal hasn’t been God’s goal. Andy Stanley of North Point Community Church
says this:
You need to address your
unresolved childhood issues...if you attempt to build intimacy with a person
before you've done the hard work of becoming a whole and healthy person, every
relationship will be an attempt to complete the hole in your heart...all of
your relationships will feel like they have a hole in them.
Do you know how much pressure that is on a man to fill
that hole in my heart? Do you know how
pressure that is on me to keep him there?
I’ve been trying to fill a hole that can’t be filled by anything in this
world.
Andy gave us this diagram to show us just how much a
troubled parental past sabotages romantic relationships:
 |
“If you have any leftover angst with momma and daddy,
your
spouse catches it.” Andy Stanley
|
“Don't drag unnecessary angst into future relationships,
deal with it now,” he says.
This is the next step on my ladder. I am going to deal with the past so that in
my future I can fully love the man who God sends to me. I want us to have fights about toothpastes
and toiletpaper, not past hurts that have nothing to do with him.
Now’s the time, God.
And with 296 days to go, I have plenty of it.
