My dear boy,
Over time, you will come to realize that you were better off not making certain decisions. A few of these decisions might have a life-altering effect; however, you must extend grace to your younger self. Your younger self acted based on the information he had, or maybe not.
Forgiveness, though a selfish gift, is one we seldom give ourselves. We “offer” this to others yet neglect the one person who needs it most- us. Everyone has that chapter or page of their life that they never read out loud. Maybe what they did is so far flung from their character or a pattern of terrible decisions whose results are but inevitable, disgraceful outcomes.
In the 5th century BC, a young prince who “was more honorable than all the house of his father” saw a damsel in the land. “He took her, and lay with her, and defiled her.” It begs the question, how does a prince more honorable than all men of his father’s house rape a woman? Although he sought to marry her because “his soul clave unto her, and he loved her, and spoke kindly to her,” this incident became a taboo, one he must not tell out loud. A paragraph that desperately needs the bleep action.
I make no excuse for him. Nonetheless, this is an instance of acting out of character, and one almost irredeemable.
A shocking revelation came to me from Proverbs 24:16. You see, many wish to rise but ignore the towering fact that the one who rises is the one who has fallen. A man on the ground cannot fall. Yet many hold a grudge against themselves for falling. Yes, you fell, it means you were once standing.
This, my dear boy, is not an invitation to voluntarily throw yourself on the ground. That is folly. But forgive yourself for falling. Resist the urge to fall into the entrapment of self loathing and self guilt and self-hate. I charge you thus because there is only perhaps one or two compliments higher than being called “righteous” by the Holy Scriptures.
Hence, if the one called “righteous” falls and rises, my dear boy, engage in the painstaking venture of learning to forgive your younger self for falling. Make room for your shortcomings, extending the hand of grace so much so that you can laugh at your mistakes.
I remembered when I arrived in Calabar. I was young and had so much faith in the possibilities that were. Including love. I believed I’d find love and go on to build my own home. Say, a modern version of what my parents have.
I arrived in Calabar with what was left of what I thought was a heartbreak. Yes, my then-girlfriend got pregnant for some dude in the sciences. It was the way she said it, as though he had better prospects than I for being in the sciences. Then there was you-know-who, who suddenly decided the UNN was her best choice. She’d later come to UNICAL, but by then, whatever was to happen to me was already done.
I remembered when I arrived in Calabar, there was a song. I’d be hearing it for the first but looking back, it was some sort of foreshadowing for that chapter of my life. “Let Her Go” by Passenger stayed with me. I think I’m a man of the melancholic mood. So, songs like that linger in my mind. More than that, nonetheless, is this song because I heard other songs. Neyo’s “So Sick” was up there, too, but this was after the damage. Though I must admit that it did not quite speak to my soul.
“Speak Into My Life” by Michah Stampley stood side by side with Passenger’s “prophecy.” He told me to let her go, and this, I would later understand, is what is called the unsaid said, but I didn’t listen. Why did the song stay with me? What was it telling me?
You know what? I hate this story.
Nevertheless, as long as I remain in this body, which threatens to become a corpse, I admit that I would have two more heartbreaks that guaranteed romantic mishaps had little to no effect on my state of mind. The Lion, the man you would come to know as your father, was born.
Initially, this persona was an attempt to bury my past setbacks and reinvent myself, but this came with a plethora of psychological torture. I still had these traumatic memories, which kept gnawing at my mind. It felt like being chewed upon by rats, but without the air they blew. There was an endless suspicion of every speech and deed from those around me. That is a terrible way to live. This is no excuse for naivety, my son. To be forgiven is to know the truth; to know the truth is to accept the truth. Acknowledge your fault. Heck, I made a bad choice in women! Likewise, men who seek fidelity in harlots: they will never find it.
See, forgiveness does not necessarily mean we don’t remember the hurt; it is that the hurt has no effect on us when we remember. The time will come, forgive your younger self, and forge ahead. After all, what we have in wisdom we paid for in experience.
Love,
Dad.
