In my last post about how I came to Crosspoint I had the opportunity to talk about forgiveness. I have to say that before I came to Crosspoint my concept of forgiveness of others was null.

The story I am about to tell you is one that very few people know about me. I said in my last post that I have been hurt in the past as I am sure we all have been. I guess what makes this story so unique is nothing but it happened to me, and the sad thing is that it happens all across the world.

Here goes. Talk about barring your soul.

When I was a child I was physically abused by my birth mother, both my brother and I were. My brother walks with a limp due to this abuse. When he was a toddler my mother slammed a car door on his leg and never took him to the hospital to have it looked after, it broke his leg and the bones were never set so they grew back together crooked. She use to lock us in a closet when we would cry, we would cry because we were hungry or had a dirty diaper, she gave us away numerous times to people she didn’t know, fortunately they knew my father and they would call him. I figure by this point you are asking where is the father in all this, my father is retired from the military and while this was going on he was TDY (temporary duty yonder) or at work. He would come home and well, use your best imagination, don’t get the wrong idea, he only hit my mother once and that was because she had my brother in the middle of the floor choking him and he hit her to get her off of him. Not the best situation. My brother remembers so much about this that he harbors a lot of hate towards my mother, and for a long time so did I. I am not going to go into to much more detail about the abuse, just that it happened. My father divorced her and got full custody of me and my brother, this was back in the 70’s so if that tells you anything about what kind of mother she is then I will break it down a little further, how many dads do you know that have full custody of their kids now? In the 70’s it was a lot harder for that to happen.

My father eventually remarried and has been married to my step mom for almost 30 years.

As for my birth mother, she would call occasionally when she was drunk or stoned, tell us how much she loved us and she wanted us to come and see her and that she wanted to come and see us. Ya right. I didn’t want to see her, I didn’t want to talk to her, I hated her. What’s sad is that I was a child and I HATED her. Growing up I felt like I had to talk to her, I think I was 13 when she asked me why I don’t call her mom, ‘why do you call me by my first name? I’m your mom’. I hung up on her. I hated her. The last time I talked to her as a child I was 17, it was right before I graduated high school. She said she was going to come and see me graduate she was so proud of me. I hung up on her.

More on this later.