Domestic Violence: Where is the hope?
Her blond hair is stylishly cut, curling just over her ears. The platinum hue is intensified by the black-and-white photo.
The style fit the Nancy Sinatra boots-are-made-for-walkin' image she carried for much of my childhood.
Flipping through the photos, I stopped at one taken behind our Richmond, Virginia, apartment when I was about 14 years old. She was reclining in a chase-lounge patio chair, looking directly at the camera, head tilted just to the left with a slight smile on her face. I couldn't help but wonder what she was thinking at the time. Her gaze seemed to say, "I have a secret that you'll never know."
But then, I do know, as I knew then, the pain she had suffered at the hands of a man who claimed to love her -- a hell that lasted nearly three years, the demons of which occasionally return to circle my family more than three decades later.
Even today, I can still see her curled in a fetal position in the breezeway of our Orlando, Florida, house as the man in the crewcut repeatedly kicked her in the ribs. She was crying, "No, Jim! Please, no!"
It was 1968, I was 12 years old, and she had been married to him a little less than two years.
It's odd: I don't remember crying, though I'm sure I did. But I clearly remember thinking that I could get to the .32-caliber pistol in their bedroom if only he would move out of the doorway. Having handled guns since I was 6 years old, there's no doubt what I would have done had he moved. Still, I was too scared to try to push my way past him.
My next memory is that of my mother, 14-year-old sister and I hiding in the shrubs at a neighbor's house as Jim patrolled the streets on a motorcycle looking for us. In 1968 Florida, the police would not respond to domestic violence calls. We were alone without human protection, but God had his hand on this spiritual widow and orphans. The elderly couple who lived there brought us inside where my mother called some friends to come pick us up.
My sister, now 50, in recent years has only begun to remember much of what happened during that time, including having to sleep with me for fear that a drunken Jim would slip into her room at night.
For me, the memories have always seemed quite vivid. Maybe it's because I wanted to remember, out of vengeance; maybe it's because the hell we lived left me fighting my own demons for 17 years, trapped in a spiritual netherland.
Once during that time, when I was about 16, I encountered Jim. After we sat in silence, staring at each other for some time, he said, "I know you'd like to kill me."
"You're not worth it," I said.
Later, at 28 years old, while sitting alone at my family's mountain cabin, anger boiling within me, I found myself plotting that very thing, down to the details of how long it would take me to reach Richmond, gun him down, and return to East Tennessee. It was then that I realized he had made me a victim, too.
Today, there is no bitterness nor hatred toward Jim. Many in my family don't understand it, but my faith requires it (Matthew 6:14-15). To do otherwise would allow the victimization to continue.
Still, the forgiveness does not obliterate the memory.
The boy in me still cries when he remembers his mother's bruises, her tears, her fear as Jim tried to push her out of the car while speeding down a Florida highway. The primal urge is to seek revenge, to inflict the same pain, more if possible. But the voice within me brings peace, saying, "Be still, and know that I am God."
When I heard that he was a very sick man, there was a sense of justice being done. But then, I remembered that he was spiritually sick from the beginning. We merely paid the price for his illness.
Perhaps one day, before death knocks, he will find the cure.
The style fit the Nancy Sinatra boots-are-made-for-walkin' image she carried for much of my childhood.
Flipping through the photos, I stopped at one taken behind our Richmond, Virginia, apartment when I was about 14 years old. She was reclining in a chase-lounge patio chair, looking directly at the camera, head tilted just to the left with a slight smile on her face. I couldn't help but wonder what she was thinking at the time. Her gaze seemed to say, "I have a secret that you'll never know."
But then, I do know, as I knew then, the pain she had suffered at the hands of a man who claimed to love her -- a hell that lasted nearly three years, the demons of which occasionally return to circle my family more than three decades later.
Even today, I can still see her curled in a fetal position in the breezeway of our Orlando, Florida, house as the man in the crewcut repeatedly kicked her in the ribs. She was crying, "No, Jim! Please, no!"
It was 1968, I was 12 years old, and she had been married to him a little less than two years.
It's odd: I don't remember crying, though I'm sure I did. But I clearly remember thinking that I could get to the .32-caliber pistol in their bedroom if only he would move out of the doorway. Having handled guns since I was 6 years old, there's no doubt what I would have done had he moved. Still, I was too scared to try to push my way past him.
My next memory is that of my mother, 14-year-old sister and I hiding in the shrubs at a neighbor's house as Jim patrolled the streets on a motorcycle looking for us. In 1968 Florida, the police would not respond to domestic violence calls. We were alone without human protection, but God had his hand on this spiritual widow and orphans. The elderly couple who lived there brought us inside where my mother called some friends to come pick us up.
My sister, now 50, in recent years has only begun to remember much of what happened during that time, including having to sleep with me for fear that a drunken Jim would slip into her room at night.
For me, the memories have always seemed quite vivid. Maybe it's because I wanted to remember, out of vengeance; maybe it's because the hell we lived left me fighting my own demons for 17 years, trapped in a spiritual netherland.
Once during that time, when I was about 16, I encountered Jim. After we sat in silence, staring at each other for some time, he said, "I know you'd like to kill me."
"You're not worth it," I said.
Later, at 28 years old, while sitting alone at my family's mountain cabin, anger boiling within me, I found myself plotting that very thing, down to the details of how long it would take me to reach Richmond, gun him down, and return to East Tennessee. It was then that I realized he had made me a victim, too.
Today, there is no bitterness nor hatred toward Jim. Many in my family don't understand it, but my faith requires it (Matthew 6:14-15). To do otherwise would allow the victimization to continue.
Still, the forgiveness does not obliterate the memory.
The boy in me still cries when he remembers his mother's bruises, her tears, her fear as Jim tried to push her out of the car while speeding down a Florida highway. The primal urge is to seek revenge, to inflict the same pain, more if possible. But the voice within me brings peace, saying, "Be still, and know that I am God."
When I heard that he was a very sick man, there was a sense of justice being done. But then, I remembered that he was spiritually sick from the beginning. We merely paid the price for his illness.
Perhaps one day, before death knocks, he will find the cure.
