When the sledgehammer no longer works (Sharing his story)

 by Brad Knabel

“Forgiveness is this world’s equivalent of Heaven’s justice.” ~ A Course in Miracles

When I was in my 20s I often imagined some kind of showdown with my parents in which I would nail them with their child-raising crimes and failures. After I’d read out all the charges and pronounced a guilty verdict, I would not allow them to escape from some kind of justice I would then exact—although that’s where the fantasy got fuzzy.
Their crimes were clear enough: my mother had been often hostile and punishing, undermining the well-being of my two sisters and myself instead of giving us the consistent loving support she should have. In between her undeniable acts of cruelty, she was either so depressed or so drugged with a wide array of prescription mood-altering substances that she was effectively absent for days or even weeks at a time.
For good measure, she often blamed her children for her own unhappiness. True, she had a “manic-depressive” diagnosis from her psychiatrist (nowadays called bipolar syndrome). But in my fantasy trial, that was rapidly brushed aside as just another failing of hers—a failure aided and abetted by my passive, quietly compliant father, who would rather see his own children suffer than stand up to his wife’s insanity. Even if she had some kind of disorder, they should have gotten it fixed before they had children.
(Yes, I was going to be a tough prosecutor.)
In my fantasy showdown, both parents had to face the music about their abysmal performances as parents, with no excuses allowed. Then I would bring down the iron hammer of justice… somehow or other.
When my showdown with my folks finally came to pass, the circumstances were not at all as I imagined. By age 32, I was seriously ill, with a phalanx of mystifying symptoms that had just received the equally mystifying diagnosis of “chronic fatigue syndrome” (CFS)—a malady that was even less understood than it is today. In a seemingly rare act of caring, my parents had flown 3,000 miles to see just what was the matter with me, although they’d already let me know that they suspected I had AIDS or a drug habit, and didn’t want to confess. (I did have to admit that “chronic fatigue syndrome” sounded like a classically Californian excuse for something else.)

On top of all that, even stranger things had been happening. Desperate for a cure and not finding one in either conventional or alternative medicine, I’d ventured into psychotherapy, and then into the even more questionable realm of spirituality. In my very vague cloud of unknowing, I’d picked up and begun to study an utterly bizarre modern teaching, self-contained in one book known as A Course in Miracles, which mixed a heavy-duty Christian terminology with Eastern metaphysics and proposed an extreme and relentless discipline of forgiveness.
The sum total of all these circumstances was that by the time I’d sat my parents down in the living room of my apartment for a big showdown, I had none of the righteousness that I’d always expected to bring to this encounter. In fact, I was in a totally opposite state, feeling physically weak, mentally confused and utterly uncertain of what to say.
First, I found myself thanking my parents for coming all the way across the country to look after my health, and said I hoped they’d been reassured by the explanation of my condition given to them by my physician (which, in fact, they were). Then I told them that while I thought my illness had probably been triggered by some kind of virus (which I still believe), I’d had to face some deeper questions about why I wasn’t getting better after months of steadily worsening symptoms, and what I could possibly do next in the absence of any effective medical approach to CFS.
I told them, briefly, about being in therapy, and then tentatively mentioned that I’d begun working with a spiritual teaching which suggested that forgiveness was a very good idea. Then I got to the hardest part, the part that I had always thought would be easiest: I told them that I had been very angry with them for a long time because I thought they’d failed as parents, and to be perfectly honest, I simply couldn’t imagine why they’d had kids at all, if they were only going to treat them the way they’d treated me and my sisters.
(The prosecution didn’t go on quite as long, with as much damning detail, as I’d once envisioned—I was chronically fatigued, after all.)
Finally, I told them that while I might well be losing my sanity along with my health, the Course had influenced me to consider that I’d be better off just giving up my anger, lock, stock and barrel… without conditions, without them saying or doing anything differently, without anything really changing, in fact, anything besides my attitude. I ended by sheepishly admitting, “Maybe I’m just too tired to be mad at you anymore.”
At that point I closed my eyes and waited for the hammer to fall on me. After all, what the hell was I saying? This was certainly not the capital case I’d outlined in my mind for so many years. Instead, this was little more than a craven admission of surrender. They’d won! They’d gotten away with everything, and now I was saying I wouldn’t even be mad anymore?!
With my eyes closed I could easily imagine my mother rolling her eyes, or harrumphing at my outrageous complaints, and my father looking hurt or confused, as he usually did in our family’s rare moments of open confrontation. I fully expected them to rise from their seats and walk out, shaking their heads. When I summoned the courage to open my eyes and peer across the room at them, my parents instead did what I would never have expected them to do.
They confessed.
My mother already had tears in her eyes as she said, very softly, “Son, I know I’ve always been eaten up with hatred inside, and I’ve taken it out on everybody I know. I’ve had lots of drugs and therapy and it doesn’t seem to do any good. I guess there’s just something wrong with my brain, but I can’t seem to help it.”
With a look of genuine compassion, and a steely tone in his voice that I’d never heard before, my father took my mother’s hand and said, “Janie, I’ve never understood why you had to be so hateful either. And I’ve never known what to do about it.”
Then they fell silent, and little more was said between us that day. The big showdown was over in less than 15 minutes. I was reeling inside, even more dizzy than usual, not quite able to believe what I’d just heard. My folks seemed beaten-down and sad. They left to return to their hotel, and I went out for a walk, hardly noticing that I suddenly had the energy to do so. In fact the walk consisted of little more than staggering from tree to tree in a semi-wild grove, weeping uncontrollably and trying to grasp what had just occurred.
Despite my parents’ confession of exactly the failings that I had always wanted to pin on them, I did not feel especially vindicated or victorious. Instead, I felt strangely shattered inside, as if an iron hammer of forgiveness had fallen on my own sense of self. Because at that moment I realized that the self I’d grown into was heavily identified with being a victim.
First I’d been the victim of my cruel and crazy parents, and then I’d become the victim of a cruel and crazy illness, and when you got right down to it, I was the victim of a cruel and crazy world. But if my first oppressors, my parents, had confessed, what was I going to do now? I knew I couldn’t go on identifying myself as their victim, but if that was not me anymore then who was I? Suddenly I didn’t have a clue, and the total effect was both frightening and disorienting.
“I am not a victim of the world I see,” suggests Workbook Lesson #31 in A Course in Miracles. I’d read that lesson before, but now it became the starting point for a new exploration of who I might actually be.
It would be nifty if I could report that I awoke the next day totally cured of CFS. In fact, I would get sicker for a few more months before beginning a slow, halting recovery that would require about five more years. But I did fully recover about seven years after onset, and today, I look back on that paradoxical showdown with my parents as the day I began healing.
I’ve since gone on to research and write extensively about forgiveness, and I’m always a little amused when I hear people dismiss this powerful discipline as a means of caving-in, letting other people off the hook, or just being spiritually correct. That’s when I know that these folks have not experienced the iron hammer of forgiveness smashing their old, sad self to smithereens.
To this day, that’s the only form of violence I can wholeheartedly recommend.

ENDLESS LOVE

GOD IN THE SOUL MATES

(THE GIFT OF ETERNITY)

A soul mate is someone to whom we feel profoundly connected, as though the communication and communing that take place between us were not the product or intentional efforts, but, rather a divine grace.  That kind of relationship is so important to the soul that many have said there is nothing more precious is life.          Thomas Moore

Grief is an awful thing.  Losing a partner, a best friend or anyone else that fit “just right” in our lives causes the heart to break, the throat to constrict and as Lynn Lauber describes so well, the “hot depleting brine of tears” that remind us of our helplessness in the finality of death.  My own memory of my first awful death was lying in a fetal position, crying uncontrollably and asking “how will I go on?”  But we do, and we need hope that there is a larger picture than what we small creatures understand.  And in the case of losing those partners, there is evidence of life beyond, and it is exemplified by soul mates.

The world of God seems like a vast, infinite electromagnetic field. It is filled with undulating charged pieces of response to prayer and focused thought.  It is magnetized by a cosmic pull that brings the right lessons, the right circumstances or the right person into our life.  That magnetic pull happens with soul mates.  There’s a loving cosmic hand that guides two souls to gravitate to each other.  When they connect, it’s just right.  There’s no question.  We all know it when we see it.  That energetic cord never loses its power.  It goes on forever.

My grandparents were like that.  Farr met Modie in a Danish farm town in Oregon.  Within a week they had fallen in love.  They bought the family farm and raised many children.  People came from all over the countryside for polkas in the barn. “Farr’s” blacksmith shop was the town center for gossip and coffee.  Modie tended the garden.  They played hard, they worked hard, and they loved hard. 

Farr died during a visit to Denmark, Modie lived many more years.  She lived a full life, but looked forward to the day when she would reconnect with Farr.  Well into her nineties, she lay dying.  Her nursing home roommate woke to hear her thrashing as she prepared to shed her mortal coil.  Suddenly, in the stillness of the early morning, she looked at the ceiling and lifted her arms in welcome.  And she died, ready for the eternal polka with her love.

And the infinite energy cord never lost its power.

Chris met Wilda on a passenger train headed south.  They shared the same row of seats and the same refreshments as they talked of their dreams and goals.  With much in common and a spark that ignited immediately, they fell in love.  They realized their dream of land and family, and shared sweet stories of life and love for many years.  Among many of their common bonds was their love of the coastal corridor that took travelers from the inland valley to the beach.

Wilda died with Chris by her side.  Her ashes were strewn on a part of that beloved corridor.  Chris, like Modie, lived many more years and even remarried, but Wilda was his heart.  When he lay dying in his home years later, he looked up and his face changed from a grimace to one of adoration and joy.  It was the same look, his daughter said, that he had whenever he saw Wilda.  “Go to her” his daughter encouraged him, and he died.

The family spread his ashes in the same area of that corridor.  His daughter and I hiked into that forest area one day, and found two trees that had wrapped around each other in loving embrace.

And the infinite energy cord goes on forever.

Joannie met Chuck on a cruise.  Learning that they loved to dance, dance they did.  They danced every night and soon fell in love. When they returned to their home towns, Chuck wooed her until she married him.  Chuck had cancer, and together they explored all sorts of treatments and spiritual retreats to augment his medical activities.  They learned about Hawaiian meditations, how to communicate in peaceful ways, and found many books and classes to keep them alive and searching for answers.  When Chuck died, he had grown in so many loving ways.  Joannie sat by his side as he moved on peacefully.  He promised to stay in touch.

In the midst of her grieving, Joannie waited for word from Chuck.  She continued life with her friends and mediated regularly, trying to find ways of healing the broken heart.

There was one magazine that Chuck loved and Joannie didn’t care for.  It was all about international travel; it was thick with heavy paper and glossy photos.  This cumbersome volume came in the mail one day and Joannie immediately bundled it with other unimportant papers to go to recycling.  As she carried the papers to the garage, the magazine slipped from the pile and landed, open, on the floor.  Chuck was in a picture taken years before, smiling at her.  The smile seemed to say, “I told you I’d be in touch”. 

Rollie and Hazel lived a solid family life for many years.  Hazel was a sweet soul who kept a wonderful home with fresh baked goods and the music from her beloved piano.  Rollie worked on the railroad.  He loved to play jokes, and he loved to play music. He played the guitar alongside Hazel’s piano. 

The years were good to Rollie, but Hazel developed brain tumors that, when removed, took a toll on her ability to recognize people or even connect with daily living.  Always sweet, always cheerful, she would greet anyone with great love and joy, but didn’t really know who they were.  Sadly, Hazel gradually lost any recognition of Rollie.  He visited her daily in her nursing home, loving her completely.  She was kind and cheerful, just as she was to anyone else who came to see her.  Each day, he hoped that she would acknowledge him and their love.

Rollie’s health eventually failed and he joined Hazel in her nursing home room.  He still cared and loved her; she still smiled her smile of undiscerning kindness.  As the months passed, Rollie became less able to walk or tend to Hazel.  He was failing, yet held on to be with his beloved wife.

One night, Hazel sat up and looked at Rollie.  “Rollie,” she said.  “I love you very, very much.”  With a smile, Rollie died. 

It is the eternal love that never ceases to fill those of us who watch with joy and humility. 

There are many gifts in the energetic ebb and flow that is God’s world.  In those times of grief, we ask for hope, peace and love.  Always, hope and peace come with those inspiring expressions of love.