From my earliest memories, things weren’t always the best at home. Although from the
outside my family looked happy and content with the life we had, so much more went on behind closed doors. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy during my childhood, and not everything was bad, but watching my parents constantly fight and feeling like there was never peace at home was really confusing at such a young age. I never truly understood why my dad treated my mom the way that he did, and it really upset me. This led to me having hard feelings towards my dad for most of my childhood. My dad had a hard childhood, much harder than mine, so a part of me knew that he was just a damaged man who was never able to heal from his trauma. On the other hand, I just didn’t understand why he had to take out all those hard feelings on her.
My first vivid memory of my dad is from 2016. I was ten years old, and it was a school night. The only thing I really remember was that I decided to sleep on the couch that night because my parents were fighting in their bedroom. I figured that if my mom needed help, I could protect her if I was right outside the door. Now I see that I obviously would not have been able to do much against my dad, but it just shows how bad the situation had become. I remember my mom was yelling, and my dad was just kind of laughing. My heart started beating fast, and I had this buzzing in my head all night long because I was so worried about her. Thankfully, though, everything ended up being fine that night, and I didn’t have to be anyone’s “superhero.”
I remember the fight that began this entire process of my dad changing. It is the biggest fight my parents had that I remember to this day, and it was the day we found out my dad hadn’t stopped drinking even though he claimed he had years before. My mom ended up kicking my dad out, and I don’t really remember how long he left for, but I think it was a couple of months. One thing I do remember is that once he had left, it felt like the weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders and that finally my dad wouldn’t hurt my mom anymore.
Eventually, my dad ended up moving back in, and long story short we ended up moving up north a couple of months later. When we moved there, everything really began to change. For the first time in my life, my dad stopped hitting my mom. Ever since then, my dad hasn’t hit my mom, and I don’t really understand how he changed so quickly. One thing I do know is that God really worked on my dad, because the amount of change that he made in just a couple of months and even just recently has honestly been a miracle.
For the first time ever, it felt like my parents cared about each other. Sadly, even though the hitting had stopped, my parents still fought a lot. When they fought, the whole neighborhood could hear them. So, the fighting continued just up until around the winter of 2022. Then, around January 2023, something big happened between my parents, and it put my dad in a really tight spot. He had to decide to either treat my mom the way she deserved to be treated or lose her. Ever since then I have seen my dad make a complete 180 change in how he treats my mom, and how he treats us, his children. My dad went from being this aggressive, mean father that I feared, to being such a gentle, nice dad that now I genuinely enjoy spending time with.
Over these past couple of months I have seen my parents fall more and more in love every day. Even though it hurt so much to watch them both cause an immense amount of pain to each other, I would go through it all over again if it meant that I could watch my dad fall in love with Jesus and finally accept Him into his heart, and on top of that watch him truly fall in love with my mom and treat her the way she always deserved to be treated.
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