I remember being in Mrs. Clements' class which would mean that I was either in the 3rd or 4th grade. One of my close friends back then was a kid named Sammy. Sammy came over to my house almost everyday as my Mom would pick him up after school with me and he would stay at my house until his Mom got off work and came by to get him.
Then one day while on the playground during recess at school, I was walking around the playground just looking at things. I heard someone running up behind me. I turned and Sammy was there with a large rock in his hands and had it over his head as he was swinging down to bash me in the head and possibly kill me. I jumped and the rock hit the back of my shoulder and back instead of my head. As I laid on the ground, I remember this feeling coming over me. Rage started pouring out through my body like a volcano had gone off within me. I jumped up and the ensuing fight that started with Sammy trying to kill me ended with me almost killing Sammy.
It was that day that caused me to realize that the monster that had inhabited my grandfather, Llewellyn Swint was also within me. Even though I had never met him, I had heard stories about my grandfather. I have been told that before he started drinking, he was the kindest man you would ever meet. He was the type of person that would give the shirt off his back, if it would help someone else. Then he started drinking and when he drank, he had a Mr. Hyde type of anger come out of him toward everyone else. Then he became an alcoholic. So, this monster side of him is all that people saw of him until the end of his life.
So after the fight I knew that I was capable of having the same thing happen to me. It was at this point that I made my decision not to drink, because the only way of not becoming that type of monster was not to drink the elixir that turned him into that monster.
That decision was important because I knew that I could not unleash that monster except for cases like the fight where it came out in self defense. So not drinking was one step but I needed others also. One thing that I have done that has caused misunderstandings is that I would walk away whenever I felt it trying to come out. I would go off by myself until I calmed down, then I would return and talk and be social. I have had this thrown in my face several times as others have said that this need to go off and settle down just shows that I was an evil person and not to be trusted. This accusation really hurt, because I never unleashed my rage towards another person and the very thing that I would do to insure that would never happen was used against me.
Another thing that I did was to get into football. You may have heard Coaches as well as other players say that I played with a lot of heart. While it is true that I had a love of the game, it was my anger that made me a better player than what my genes had provided for me to be. Football was a funnel for me to channel my emotions into.
So doing these two things kept my anger issues from coming out, but they did not cure me. The healing process has come over years of time and started with my belief in God. Although the healing did not take place over night, it did take place.
It started a few years after the fight when I had a Paul like conversion to Christianity. That is why the next time that I really had a face to face meeting with Sammy during my sister's 8th grade year at Sunnyvale (which was also my Senior year at NMHS), I was able to offer him my hand of friendship and forgiveness. An offer to make things back to where they were before the fight. He would not accept my offer, but I had a peace within me because I knew that I did not hold any more grudges against him.
My healing really took of when I got married. Even before we got married I told Virginia everything about me. I told her things that I had never been able to tell anyone else. I wanted her to know all the baggage that I was bringing and that I was trusting God to help me with it.
Over time, I gained the ability to forgive some people for things that was done against me that I had previously thought were unforgivable. As the Love of God grew within me, my love for others began to grow. And lastly I began to love and forgive myself for not living up to the expectations that I had placed upon myself, for not being perfect.
One good thing that has come out of the those Seminary graduates who have sought to destroy my family and to isolate me from all my friends, has shown me that my rage is no longer there. Oh, I still get mad and get hurt, because they are a part of love. As long as you love, you will get mad when the object of your love is threatened and will get hurt when the object of your love turns on you.
I hope this helps someone to overcome their rage by accepting God's love, because anything that works on me will work for you also.
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