Independence
As you can guess, the fighting within my family brought ruin. One night came it to one big climax and one fight that will forever be engrained in my head. My parents, both who had one too many to drink, went from a screaming match to physical over the course of this night. My dad held my mom to the floor while my mom clawed at him. My siblings and I sat on the couch, crying, begging them to stop. And my brother (younger one at that) tried to get in between it but was pushed back. And in a night, there was a split in my family. Police came, questioned us what happened, and I shakily recounted those details. My dad was arrested and taken in for a night. While we had to pick the scraps that were left of this fragmented family.
And for a year, my mom had to take care of me and my two siblings by herself. My parents were separated, my dad living on the couch in the one-bedroom apartment my two aunts lived in. I barely saw my dad anymore, on the occasion where he took me and my siblings out. While my mom, at the time, worked a 9-5 kind of job. Most nights, she wouldn’t get home until 6 or 7 at night. As such, there was often hours, me and my siblings were on our own, no adult to watch over us when we got home from school. It was a time I began to learn how to slowly take care of myself. It was a time where I slowly learned to stopped leaning on others for help and took it all on myself. Unless it was absolutely necessary, I never asked for help. And if I’m being honest, it is something I’m still wrestling with today. As anything, it’s a journey of learning everything over again and uprooting the old.
But the thing is, what was old can be shed. And we can turn into new, we can be born again. While so many habits…behaviors and mindsets was set in my childhood, I don’t have to carry them anymore.
Because there is a God who has called me greater. Who has saved me from myself and washed me clean. Who continues to work in me and set me free again and again. That is the God I believe in, my Lord and Savior who has done so much in this life of mine. Who hasn’t left me but instead calls out the gold in me. Who says I can renew my mind, I can choose which thoughts I entertain. I don’t need to let every thought rampant, but I can take captive the bad ones and replace them for good. Making this idea of self-independence…of not needing help have less and less influence. Especially as I turn to God again and again to help me.
Romans 12:2
Do not be conformed to this world (this age), [fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs], but be transformed (changed) by the [entire] renewal of your mind [by its new ideals and its new attitude], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His sight for you].
