I believe in forgiveness

I believe in forgiveness

Growing up most children, mainly girls, my age had a very steady and very strong relationship with their mothers. But unlike most children in the 3rd grade, my family was going through a divorce. My mother had decided that she was done with my father and wanted nothing more to do with him. They picked a day when she would leave; I can remember taking a “vacation” so that my younger sister and I wouldn’t have to be home when she left. I don’t think that I realized how hard a divorce was going to be, or exactly what it was. All I knew at the time was that my mother was leaving us, and I was going to have to be the mom to my sister, two and a half years younger than me.

Years past, my father remarried and moved our family to South Jordan. By the time I was 11 years old, my mother had finally started to date a man name Steven. I was glad that she had found someone but still felt like he was a very bad and mean man and I wanted nothing to do with him. When she told my little sister and I that she was pregnant we realized that they would probably end up married.

We were right. The month before the birth of my little brother my mother married Steven Sorenson. For the first year or so of my brother’s life, Steven stayed happy and was very kind to my sister, brother, mother and me. After Christian’s first birthday everything about his demeanor began to change. He would spit his chew into empty Pepsi cans leaving them around the house; if my younger sister or I knocked one over it was our responsibility to make sure it was all cleaned up. In the basement apartment they were renting my sister and I shared a room across the hall from theirs, he had no problem standing there watching us change, at the time we thought nothing of it. We were only 13 and 11 years old. Steven started to develop extreme anger issues. The last time I saw him, I had locked not only myself but younger siblings in my room until my mother got home from work, just so that Steven could not get to us.

Two months later on the phone with my mother, I screamed at her and told her that she was no mother to me, that I didn’t want to be subjected to anger and fear like that whenever I was with them. After this incident many years past and after one very lucky phone call in December of 2007 I finally saw my mother and little brother for the first time in 5 years. To say that I forget the incidents that occurred, would be a false statement, but forgiving her of her past, was much easier to do that I originally thought it would be.

This I believe, that people do change, that forgiveness is one of the hardest things for many people to do, but upon granting someone forgiveness, the feeling or relief that comes with it, is a great burden lifted off your shoulders.