I have written many time of the things I have learned from kids and the young men and women I see everyday. I hope these have not bored you. Today I want to tell of a young man just 18 years old, but with enough hardship in his life to last more than one lifetime.
His story begins when he was born to a single mother. Three years later his mother’s live-in boy friend sexually abused him. Even though he was only three, he says he remembers it like it was yesterday. The judge in the case told mother that she would have to choose between her son and her boyfriend. She choose the sex abuser! Some time later the scum-bag went to jail after raping another girlfriend’s daughter.
I’ll spare you the details of his many foster homes and the abuse he received from them. Let’s jump ahead to age 17 when he was living in his car. He was an ambitious youth and always had a job thus affording him the luxury of the used, rusty place he call home.
While living in his car he often went without food for several days; eventually he collapsed on the street. Witnesses called the ambulance and after a visit to the hospital and some hot food the authorities found his maternal grandmother and he was taken to her home. She agreed to take him in until he graduated from high school some months later.
He contacted an army recruiter in an attempt to get his life on track and soon was in my office. He was a bright boy, did well in school, and had a vocabulary more consistent with that of a college graduate. My heart went out to him. I asked how he managed to get through this stuff and come out with such a good attitude.
“I’m a committed Christian,” he answered. “So I forgave them and went on with my life. What else could I do?”
“I have no idea,” I stumbles through a response. “I guess they say, ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ I just know you are one of those who got stronger.”
“It’s not about being stronger,” he corrected me. “It’s about forgiveness. Forgiveness is the foundation of humanity.”
I don’t know if this was his original thought, or if some one had spoke it to him, but I know he believed it and lived it. And, it caused me to ask myself, would I be able to forgive those who put him through that incredibly awful childhood. I rationalized they didn’t offend me, they offended him, and Him, and all those of us who know His love. So if he and He can forgive I have no other option.
Think about it. I’ll let you come up with your own version of the lesson.