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Blog Post from Nov. 9, 2008 "Oppression and Violence"
I just phoned dad. He watches his fixed-income, so he doesn’t have a long-distance carrier. Our relationship is bourn upon my initiative and my dime. I also save up energy and steel myself for these calls. I know that my boundaries will take a battering and I will need time to reinforce them again. Since it was already 10:30 AM, I was risking that he was already up and drinking. It didn’t matter anyway. This was the first conversation since his candidate had lost the election and that was going to be the unavoidable topic.
I’ve actually begun the practice of calling dad as a way to practice my own spiritual growth. I’m tired of backing down and being harangued. I finally recognized that the yelling, names, not letting a word in edgewise, are dad’s way of forcing himself upon others. When it is done to someone who cannot stand up to you, like your own young child, it is oppressive. Not only are the words, volume and insistence all violent, the action itself is violent to the child’s selfhood. It says, “Conform, or else.”
So, I call him. And, as an adult I interrupt and calmly ask him, “What do you get out of lecturing me? Do you feel any better getting it off your chest?” “No!” he barrels, “I’M TRYING TO TEACH YOU! YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT THIS WORLD IS COMING TO!” “And that’s more important than hearing from your daughter about her life?” He slams the receiver down. Touche’ dad. Too bad you don’t have long distance to call me back because I am waiting again until I have the extra time and energy to call you. That is my boundary, and it matures with each time I assert it. I keep knocking on the door of the man who begat me to offer him a relationship with ME, not an opportunity to remake me into his own image to prop up his own fears.
I’m not sure how to finish this because I don’t know if it will ever be finished. I continue to seek Christ daily and He heals me from the effects of my childhood. I feel like a peony, delayed in bloom due to fear and neglect, but beginning to open my many petals to the Son to reveal all the beauty and character that I was meant to have.
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