Kevin1971

I agree, and I wanted to add, I had a grandmother who suffere Alzhiemers. She was the sweetest woman you would have ever meant. At the end she became a very angry person, easily annoyed. They called it "Alzhiemer's rage." The doctor said the part of the prefrontal cortex that normally controls impusle and regulates appropriate emotional responses often decays, sadly, and this is why these sufferes have the inappropriate and negative emotional outbursts. with her, she once cursed me, but I knew that was not her at all and had only the deepest compassion for her. I knew that was not her spirit, which was being taken away by that horrible disease. But with a person already angry and mean-spirited, I think that personality only gets worse with the disease. I will pray for you Ailen. Try to connect with good family members and friends and get support. I realized too that I had not done that in a while and was also trying to control circumstances that are beyond my control and I have to lean more on God and my faith. And just walk away when these things happen. I wish I had a couple days ago. I think that is best and try to commune with God to be calm and centered. God bless.

Thank you, and yes please keep me in your prayers! Have a blessed day!

Pretty good commandments for life in general! I wish this were more common practice. That and the ability to hit a real world version of ALT DEL and control Z to delete those mistakes I wish I could take back!

Thank you brother. I want to be that man and find that forgiveness. But I also know, he is someone that even if I do find that peace in heart towards, have to keep my distance from at the end. He is genuinely that toxic a person. I do not believe that Jesus or God ever intended in finding forgiveness in our hearts (which I feel means housing no malice or hatred) as meaning to have to sit down with those that would bring not only themselves down, but happy to pull you down with them as well. My dad is such a person. I've prayed for him all my life and found that his only contribution, literally aside from making monkey, was to shiphon off your spiritual vitality, happiness, and positive outlook. There might be a problem that upon some reflection can be readily addressed, and with hope and determination and faith, handled. With my father, it is the end of the world, you are to blame for it, and will be cursed at out of his moronic stupidity of not understaning he is self-projecting his warped fears onto the world and taking it out on those that would otherwise tolerate him and have shown repeatedly a love quite frankly he has repeatedly taken for granted or even oddly dispised. I love Christ and his teachings. I am a flawed human being and far from the grace of Jesus, and this is why I want to find a way to forgive, but unless my father miraculously turns his own life around to God, want nothing to do with him. There are few people I know that can manage to turn a moment of celebration in a long-standing sour-filled moment of disappointment and sadness and leave many feeling like garbage at the end. I refuse to believe God wants us to suffer with those people who have shown over and over again their refusal to acknolwege their own failings and change it for the better. That is my father's burden to bear and take ownership of in having a victory over. He either wants that or not. And he is in love with his self-hate that he projects. I might forgive him for that--and hope and pray sincerely to God for that. But I will not let my guard down with him and let him into my heart with all his hate and vileness, especially with my own family. That is where I draw a firm line. A man knows when he's done wrong and needs to change for the better. You can own up to that or decide to remain weak and give in to hate and the glorifcation of evil. For me, the more I've been hurt, even after a bad moment, where I will retreat into a dark place temporarily to take stock, I then want to give out more love! It made me angry to have given in to a violent act that my father has done often throughout my upbringing. it disgusted me. I wish I was the stronger man at that moment and just walked away instead of letting my ego get provoked and let instead God take over. I failed at so doing. For that I ask God his forgiveness and to find it for my father. But this is a deep wound and will take time to heal. I realize me being around my father is just constantly opening up anew old wounds and adding to them new ones. It's not healthy being around him or having him around those I love. My biggest fear is he would say something to the little ones as he said to me. God help that ever from happening. I find it the most dispicable lowly of spiritually-bankrupt minds and hearts to ever hurt a child--be it physically or mentally. So yes, bother, please keep praying for me! I need that and welcome it. May the peace of God be with you. Thank you.

Thanks patticats. That sounds like an excellent idea. I used to eschew the idea of keeping a "journal" as being a bit too "Oprah" for my tastes, but there is power in the written form, a power to convey and see your thoughts and feelings conveyed on paper by your own hand that adds healing I think in having them acknowledged in a more readily seen and concrete fashion through ink on paper. It also, I think, gives you a sense of ownership and power over them, in coming to more fully understand them and their more nuanced influences on our life, which we often do not reflect upon or quite realize. Just having articulated my feelings on this post, I feel, did much of giving me a bit of greater clarity and insight of what the toxic elements of this past are and fully acknowleding them and knowing how I want to deal with them instead of being ignornat of their influence and at their mercy in my life. Falling down happens. I can forgive a person an infinite number of times for their "failures." It's when they don't wish to acknowledge it, learn from it, and better themselves from it (and one can, I fully believe this), where I have trouble (and I especially place this criticism on myself) that is less forgivable. You sound like you've come a long way from whatever past troubles you are now free. Rock on! In my prayers too...

Thank you countingsheep. I am sorry for your loss and will keep you in my prayers. I appreciate your kind words or enouragement. I wish you sleepful, rested nights ahead and less counting of sheep.

I think we might have been editing at the same time. I was cleaning up some typos. Please remove any offending wording, as I assure you this was not my intent. If this was an inappropriate forum to post, you can of course remove it or relocate it. Thanks.

Hello. I am not sure I am even asking a question, as just feeling down and out and maybe hoping to connect with some good-minded and good-souled people out there. I'm a Christian by faith but admit I have fallen away from my faith in the past several years. I grew up in a very heavy-handed religiousity-ladden home, entirely from my mom's side, where it was in hindsight a really cultist mindset that manipulated people based on fear of hell. There was very little encouraging, uplifting spirituality that was at all centered on Christ's teaching. I mentioned this only because I broke away from that late in life, the constant anticipation of God's eminent wrath about to unpredicatbly decend upon me following me. For me, now older, I want that God I knew as a child. The one you felt and knew was real when you just woke up and breathed or went outside and saw the sky. Existence itself is enough testiment to a deeply spiritual nature that is an unheard song and praise of God. But life has a way of eroding that feeling, and I realized as I've gotten older, I take much for granted now. But this has recently been challenged by the fact my mother has terminal cancer and literally on her death bed. My sister and I have been the primary caregivers of my mom, fighting the system to get her what she needs in terms of medicare. My father, who is now old himself but still works is and has been utterly uselsss. We grew up in a very abusive household with him, cursing, screaming, and debasing my mother. It was mostly emotional and psychological abuse, but there was a brief period when he was drinking and became physically abusive with my mom. I was no older than 5 when I remember he assaulted my mom, a God-fearing woman, who was very subdued in many ways, but had enough with him and threw a small but heavy clock radio at him and went after him with a hammer, threatening him if he ever put his hand on her, she'd have him arrested and thrown out. The police came and even though my father was bleeding badly from his back fromt he radio cutting him, they were going to arrest him for battery. He pleaded and my mother intervened on his behalf. He was not arrested and swore he'd change. But of course he never did. My mother got caught up into a horrible cult of "Christians" that were lead more by fear of eternal damnation than of celebrating the existence of God's creation. For our part, me and my sister kept away as far as possible from our dad, but I was his primary target, often slapped, and had glass cups and items hurled at me. I know its pathetic being an adult man and still carrying this unresolved anger from my childhood, but now when I see my father and he opens his mouth to us and curses, all those childhood memories come flooding into my mind. I wish I could turn it off. I still remember the large glass tropicana half gallon bottle filled with water being hurled at me, when I awoke in the middle of a hot summer night after my father came home drunk and was cursing my mother in the kitchen. I went to her defense telling him to leaver her alone. I narrowly got away from the exploding pieces of glass that flew by me when the bottle smashed against the doorway. Then there was the hot coffee he threw at my face when a young teenager when I dared to stand up to him. But that was nothing compared to the horrible things, deeply sexually degrading things, he would say to us. My mom was called everything under the sun, and soon her own spirit was eroded by this man. She fell away from her own belief of God at one time, which deeply bothered me. My sister was called horrible things, and I was called terrible things. He became increasingly phsyically abusive with me until at around 15, I had enough. He grabbed me around the neck and was choking me. I flung his hangs off of me and hurled him through the bathroom door. He went careeming inside the bathroom and literally through the glass partitioners of the tub. I was initially genuinely scared for his safety. I walked in, finding him dazed but otherwise alright. I remember that day like yesterday. I stood there over him and looked down at him and told him that I was not a small kid anymore and that if he came to me again, I would beat him and let everyone he knew know just what he was and doing and how they'd know he was a coward and still got himself handed by his own kid. He knew after that that he could not physically intimidate me, but his mouth became more of his weapon. I guess I never forgave my father, a person I see as a pathetic, unedcuated, stupid fool who is merely a male and a not a real man. Coward. Narcissist. Emotional parasite. Charlatan. These are the words that come to mind when I think of him. He use to wish my mother cancer and hope she would end up in a wheelchair. Both of these happened. I hate the man. God forgive me, but I cannot help but feel it should be him with the fate he wished on my mom and not her. But now he has become even more pathetic. He's been completely reliant upon my mom and us for everything. He cannot--nor ever has--coped with life's difficulties, even the slightest ones, which he would take out on us like the coward fool he is. But my sister and I have showed him patience and he has been genuinely stricken with guilt for the things he said to my mom, even asking my sister if he "did this." Now that my mother's condition has worsen, he's become worse in temperment, and his old foul-mouth ways have returned with a vengence. A couple days ago, I was visiting him and he began taking out his anxieties on me and when I told him to calm down he cursed and called me names , I became instantly hotheaded, and told him to shut his mouth and called him ungrateful that should be suffering the fate he wished on my mom. Again he called me the same thing and I warned him I would slapped his mouth if he said it again. He did with a smile, and I slapped him hard across the face to where he cried. And I admit, I didn't feel the slightest bad about it. But of course that is not true. I was for that moment, ever vile disgusting thing that pathetic old fool before me was and is. And I gave into it and ashamed of it. I don't want to be anything like that poor excuse of manhood, including his irrational, self-projecting denials and turn-arounds. I did wrong, and it getting angry and physical made me not only feel weak but weak-minded. I should be above that--and better than him. I wasn't. When my mom dies, I will not have anything more to do with this little man and could care less for him. I am left now as an adult still feeling like that defenseless kid growing up with this pathetic monster. It's so pathetic. I have no fear of him now but just deep disgust and anger. And I don't know how to get rid of it--and want to badly. I ask God to help me with this. I love my family, and for the life of me, I would rather die than ever say a tenth of the horrible things to any of my love ones that this man has said to us. Growing up with this man made me feel oddly abandoned even though he was physically present in our lifes, emotional and spiritually robbed of our childhoods in many ways, and feeling unloved and unworthy. Even though now an adult, I can articulate and intellectually understand these emotional sources rationally, I am still left dealing with them, as is my sister. I guess, now after this long email, I just needed to write it out. I apologize for its length and rambling nature, but I see too I'm asking for prayers to any good God fearing people out there. There is still that child in me that remembers well the God of his youth and even now as an adult, there are days when I awake and breath in that first conscious breath of air that I have that same joyful contemplation of God's presence, or when I come home late and see the night time sky, I know God is all around. It is a deep, unshakable feeling of profound conenction. But I am still dealing with much unresolved anger and even hate. And I don't want these things in my heart. I want to be a good man. A loving man. A kind man. A genlte man. A strong man, emotionally, pyschologically, and spiritually. A God-fearing man. Please pray for me and my family. God bless.