pray. - Forgiveness

Kim Bearden touched my heart the day I visited Ron Clark Academy with my colleagues. I sat in a classroom with at least 75 other adults and fought back tears, because I was embarrassed to cry, however, I really really wanted to. She spoke very vulnerably to a room of educators about some personal challenges and how those challenges brought her to where she is today. Her story resonated with me that particular day and even more so today. It has been floating around in my heart for awhile, and I've been wanting to write about it, but the time just didn't seem right - until now.

She walked in circles on stage - front and center - and spilled some deep life lessons. She knows all too well that raw emotion of disappointment and heartache and pain and rage. She knows all too well how arduous it is to hold your shit together for everyone else's well being - when all you want to do is mourn and weep and pulverize life's problems. As she was telling her intense dramatic life story, she threw something like this out there: When you find forgiveness, you relinquish power. How powerful is that?

I tend to have bad blood toward people who hurt the ones I love. And, there's one man in my life who has hurt some very special people, some people I love an awful lot. For nearly 20 years, I couldn't forgive him. I thought I had succeeded in forgiveness several times, but a couple of years ago, I realized I still had a great deal of animosity toward him. I saw him for the first time in a long while. I saw him from across a college basketball stadium, and my heart instantly capsized. My hands got sweaty. My face got hot. My legs started twitching. My playful mood evaporated. My mind shut down. All I could think about was the rage I felt inside. Then, within minutes, he was sitting just a few feet away from me. As we left the stadium, he looked at me and asked for a hug. I about threw up in my mouth. For weeks after this experience, I was messed up. I had a hard, hard time dealing with my feelings. I felt guilty for disliking a human being this much. I was furious with him, and disappointed I didn't let him have it. I felt pity for him, and disgust with myself for feeling the pity. I felt like so many years of my life had been a lie because of him. He played my family like a Las Vegas card shark, and we never saw it coming until he ran away with everything. 

Not too long after Mrs. Bearden's monlogue, I dreamt about him. The dream was so incredibly vivid. I woke up in a panic all sweaty and terrified. In this dream, I was in my childhood home, sleeping in my bed. My mom came busting through my bedroom door, at some crazy midnight hour, and curled up beside me in my twin bed. She told me to be quiet and not to worry. Then, her breathing sped up and she whispered, "Do you hear him?" Right then, I heard a voice that I had longed to hear. It was the voice of my brother, who passed away many years ago. His voice was so comforting, and it was getting closer and closer. My mom kept telling me not to listen to it. She kept telling me to pretend I was sleeping and it would all be ok. She was so afraid, and I couldn't figure out why. All I heard was the peaceful voice of my brother. Before I knew it, the voice was in the room with us and police sirens were outside my bedroom window. They police officers were yelling his name through a megaphone, and it wasn't my brother they were looking for. I looked up and there he was. This man who I had once trusted as a father, and he collapsed on the bed across my legs. I sat up and looked at his face. There was a single tear falling from his dark eyes as he said, "I'm so sorry." It wasn't my brother, but it sounded like him. I reached out to touch him and blood saturated the blankets and my skin. I held his head in my hands. As a second tear dropped from his eye, he stared at me in desolation and took his last breath. I jerked awake discombobulated and horrified. It was 3 a.m., and I rolled over grabbed my husband and held him tight, a million thoughts sweeping through me. I had a decision to make - allow these feelings of rage and malice to control me or forgive him and break free.

At 3:15 a.m., I signed onto Facebook (the only way I knew how to contact him) and sent him a private message outlining my dream. I told him I was making the choice to forgive him and not to mistake it as a truce. I told him his life choices were toxic and toxicity wasn't allowed in my life. I told him I prayed for him every day and hoped, one day, he could overcome the demons he was fighting, so that he could be the father his daughters deserved. I told him - I love myself enough to forgive him. 

He did respond to my message, but I did not respond back, because I didn't send him a message to open communication. I sent him a message to free myself of the control he had gained over me. I relinquished his power. 

To this day, I have not spoken to him, and I have no ill will toward him. I find my heart being softer and remembering the good times. I find myself appreciating the time he was part of my life - the good and the bad - for his good and his bad helped shape me into the woman I am today. He is the father of my sisters and for that I will always love him, because my life would be so empty without my sisters. So, in all the darkness he brought over our lives, he also brought a world of beauty and love - and for all of that he deserves a scheduled spot in my daily prayers. 

Sometimes, life changing messages are presented in the most unusual circumstances. At the end of the day on Friday, students of the Ron Clark Academy present house cheers. After that, they grab hands with those who are visiting, stare them straight in the eyes, and sing to them - it was one of the most uncomfortable feelings ever - I just knew they saw inside my broken soul that day. I'm an adult, an educator. I'm supposed to be educating kids and learning how to be a better teacher, and here I was, thinking of ways I could keep myself from blubbering like a baby, because in that moment I really needed the comfort of those kids' voices and the innocence and kindness in their eyes.

When I walked through the doors of Ron Clark Academy, I knew it would change my life. And, it did in a way I never imagined. The amount of intention, honesty, forgiveness, and love inside that school led me down a path I had been avoiding for far too long - I finally got my power back.