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From Frying Pan to The Fridge
People share the story of how terrible their parents were all the time. The stories also seem to gain so much popularity that those of us with good parents end up keeping quiet about our parent’s sacrifices so that it wouldn’t seem as if we were too privileged or advantaged. We allow the story of bad parenting or abusive parenting that leaves destinies broken and lives decimated to fill the airwaves.
I have always wondered why bad news or accounts of evil deeds spread like wildfire while good deeds are treated as the norm and uncelebrated. Parents are indeed supposed to make sacrifices for their children, feed them, nurture them, and provide for them. Most parents do this those who didn’t should not be the ones whose wickedness we get to consume as content.
I believe negative stories trend strangely because we desire to use them as examples to teach how not to parent. The world is a strange place, and we make the mistake of using evil deeds to reinforce good deeds. This is contrary to how the Gospel told us to teach. Can we do evil so that good may come? The answer is always no.
My father was a terrible parent, the worst of the worst I don’t talk about him he is still alive but I don’t have anything to do with him. He was a seriously disturbed man who ought not to have been allowed to be married by any sane society not to talk of having children. He ruled his home like Pharoah, his wife was treated like a slave and his male children were like rivals to his throne. He was not a rich man he was a teacher who claimed to be a disciplinarian, his marriage to my mother was brokered in the village by his parents and my mother’s parents he couldn’t attract a woman by himself I am sure nobody would have married him if he dated the way people date nowadays. He never hid his rough edges. He had Obsessive obsessive-compulsive disorder and could barely tolerate anyone in his space. He would bottle in everything he might have perceived as wrongdoings during the day and pounce on my mother in the middle of the night with a whip.
This was the norm while I was growing up, his barbaric behaviour and my mother’s quiet submissiveness to it. How they managed to have children is a puzzle to me till today I never saw them share a moment of laughter or joy, my mother was free and happy in his absence and always stricken with fear whenever he was around.
As I grew older, I began to step in whenever I could and soon I became his target too he would flog my mother and then he would pounce on me.
We had a younger sister. He never touched her; she was his angel. As we grew older, we noticed that my sister came to see this as an advantage. If she told my father anything, be it true or false, my father believed her. We would tell her what to tell him, and once she did this, he would accept it.
For example, if one of us broke a plate or a glass cup, we would tell her to tell him it fell or she broke it. She would do so and he would not flog the culprit. Of course, it backfired badly, as my sister realised she was the key, she would do anything she wanted and pin it on any of us who she wanted my father to punish on her behalf. My father wouldn’t listen to anyone once my sister had pointed him in a particular direction.
He always behaved like a dog whose owner threw a stick and shouted “catch” or “get”.This was how we got rescued from him when I turned twelve. My sister stole some money from his wallet when he raised an alarm in the house that his money was missing. My sister said she saw me with the wallet my mother stepped in and slapped my sister for lying. My mother actually saw my sister when she took the money, my father beat me and my mother like gan gan drum. My mother just had another baby at this time, and the baby was on her back, one of my father’s strokes of the cane landed on the baby this landed us in the hospital.
The hospital management saw us and alerted the domestic department, my mother told her story and I told mine. My father was arrested and dragged to the family dispute and mediation department. He sat there shamefacedly feeling as if we had deliberately brought him and his reputation to ruin by exposing him to the public.
He sat there as they read him the riot act; he signed all the documents they gave him to sign like a lamb. When we got home later that day we met all our things outside with the door firmly locked he was done with us he didn’t even bother to explain or give us new rules if we were to be readmitted into his hut of a flat.
My sister was the only one in the house with him my mother and his two sons were no longer welcome, this was how we ended up on the street that night. The only contact my mother had was the lawyer who spoke during the mediation process earlier that day. My mother called her and told her what had happened, she in turn gave us the phone number of a pastor whose church would sometimes assist people who found themselves in our shoes, this was how I met my true Father.
My mother called the pastor and he came down to our street to pick us he took us to his house and we slept in the boy’s quarters that night. That boy’s quarters became our home for the next twenty years this pastor had a family of his own and a lot of responsibilities to the church members and the community he didn’t make us a church problem he took our issue upon himself and raised us.
He set my mother up in business, placed me and my brother in good schools he didn’t treat us like charity cases he was there daily to check our homework, take us to parks and social events, sew clothes for us, and take us to our first Christmas fair. He was so good to us that I literally forgot I had a biological father and I was thirteen years old when we were thrown out of that man’s house.
My younger brother did not know any other father. My mother remarried five years after we left the former house I was eighteen by this time I and my younger brother stayed on in the boys’ quarters I was still in secondary school then because I had repeated too many times while I was under the rule of the pharaoh due to abuse and trauma.
The pastor’s wife didn’t really take to us, she kept us at arm’s length and wasn’t that nice to us but it didn’t matter. We had fatherly affection, motherly affection from my mother, food, clothes, friends, freedom, education, joy, and peace. It was heaven on earth and we thrived in it.
I became a lawyer at twenty-eight, and my younger brother became an engineer. We went to private universities. We never had to come to our father to ask for feeding allowance or school fees. We had it better than many who lived with their biological parents. I grew in the knowledge of God while living with this man.
I understand the love of the Father more than many people and I also understand the Holy Spirit as a result of my experiences . It was as if all my silent musings were whispered by him to my father because hardly would I have mentioned a thing before my father would call me into a meeting and sort it out.
When I was posted to the North for NYSC, I didn’t want to go that far I prayed about it and I was redeployed. When I met a lady I wanted to get married to and I was praying to God for clarity, my father saw her and said “You have picked a woman whose make-up is like that of your biological father, you think you need to dominate his kind to be psychologically free of him, you don’t have to. This lady will just make your life miserable. Find for yourself a lady whose source of joy is the Lord and who is happy being herself, not a miserable lady waiting on a man to make her happy”. That counsel changed my life.
My younger sister stayed with my father until she got married, the marriage didn’t work out because she was abusive towards her husband and children.
I was in court one day when I saw her divorce case on the docket It was the first time I had seen her since we left I wished my mother had fought hard to take her with us when we were thrown out.
She had no education and was already a mother of two outside of wedlock before she got married to the one who filed for divorce her father ruined her life although she knew where we were and could have come to visit at any time, she chose not to.
My younger brother is in Leeds he is married and working as a software engineer over there. I am married too with children, I pastor a church and I am a successful lawyer by every standard.
My father is in his 70s now I rarely see him as he and his wife travel the world to visit all the children they have over there from Europe to America if I am lucky, I see him once a year. He has never made any demand on me or my family, even though I do what I know to be honourable as a son.
My mother is also in her 50s now, her second marriage was blissful and she is thriving. She had two other children in the marriage. God has been very kind. My biological father is living all alone in the village now he had to relocate after he retired because he couldn’t afford to pay his rent anymore.
Some people said I should reach out to him others said there is no need some said he should meet with my wife and grand-children, others said there is no need I cannot know God and am still searching for the fruit of the tree of good and evil.
The knowledge of a good father and grandfather is enough for my children in my opinion. I don’t want to confuse them as to who is who.
May God bless all the good parents who sacrifice everything to give their children a good standing in life I also pray for those whose parents were not so good, may the healing balm of Gilead soothe their pains and make them whole in Jesus’ name. Amen