Jesus Loves Me, This I Know

I've been abused a lot in my life. I just turned 40 years old. When I was a child, my father was a violent alcoholic. He physically beat up my mother in front of me and my siblings so many times. Once I watched as he hit my mother in the face with a phone receiver and broke the bones in her face. He left huge welts on my legs once after he beat me with a piece of plastic race track. Once he put the entire family out on the freeway because he was angry at my mother. He verbally berated all of us.

So mom finally divorced him when I was eight. She did the best she could, but she had a lot of substance abuse problems. She felt bad that I had to grow up without a dad, so she got me involved in the Big Brothers/Big Sisters organization. The man that was my Big Brother was so nice to me. He bought me snow skis and taught me to ski, and would take me all the time. He took me on a lot of road trips. I really loved him.

I didn't understand at the time that he was grooming me. He sexually molested me. I told my mom and he was gone from my life. But..the damage done.

I did a lot of drugs and drank a lot of alcohol even as a kid, trying to deaden the pain. Mom married a couple more times..every time I started to like one of them, she'd divorce them. She tried to kill herself a few different times. That tends to screw with a kid's mind.

I got a girl pregnant when I was 17, and we got married. I went into the Army. Just the place for someone with abuse issues to go. I ended up going to war and when I came back, I was so screwed up in the head, I couldn't function.

I screwed everything up. My two kids at the time (we had two more a little later), were in their formative years. Thank God I didn't abuse them physically or anything, but I was just emotionally absent. I really tried hard to be a good dad..but I could only do so much. I was very limited by my emotional disabilities. Mainly hard-core depression, caused in part by post-traumatic stress disorder.

I didn't work for ten years. Finally, I got a job, but it didn't turn out so well. I ended up working for an abusive boss..surprise!! I just couldn't take it, so I resigned.

So now I'm 40. My mom just had a stroke and dementia has set in. My sister is a meth addict who won't have anything to do with any of us. Too paranoid, I guess.

My brother is a life-long con-man, a federal convict too dangerous to have anything to do with.

I try really hard not to feel sorry for myself. There is much I have to be thankful for. I have the most wonderful wife who has gone through so much with me and my problems and has stuck by me through it all. I have four beautiful children, and two perfect grandsons.

And best of all..Jesus loves me, this I know.