Dear Agatha, I am 40 years of age. My life has been a huge struggle as far back as I can remember. Both my parents, for reasons best known to them, didn’t bother about my future. They chose my immediate younger brother over me and gave him all the incentives to succeed. I, on the other hand, had to go into trade to enable me further my education.
Tried as everybody in the family did to make my mother, particularly, change her mind about me and help speak to my father on my behalf, but fell on deaf ears.
After a certain age, I stopped feeling sorry for myself and angry with them. Through the help of the church, I accepted it as my faith in life. Being the eldest of three children, I saw it as God’s way of making me self-sufficient hence invested myself into making my life the success it is now.
Apart from sponsoring myself through school, I also was able to establish my own business, which by the grace of God and the help of the only true friend, I had then, who happens to be my wife today, my life turned out wonderfully well.
Ironically, I met her when I went to re-sit my Ordinary Level exams. I was the oldest in the class. Unlike others, she didn’t join in laughing at me. She would go out of her way to explain and teach me things I didn’t know. Being so busy learning a trade, it was a struggle keeping up with classwork. I was almost giving up but, she gave me all the encouragement to continue.
Throughout the examination period, she helped me with answers. I made my papers and would not have continued but, she insisted I enrolled for the Joint Admission Matriculation Examinations (JAMB). When it became obvious to her that I was foot-dragging, she obtained the form, filled it out for me, stole my passport-size photography and submitted it. I only got to know about the whole thing when she brought the examination slip to me.
She also helped me through that examination. She registered me for Business Administration. Once I gained admission, it was easy because school was giving me the knowledge to do what I loved best, trading.
Throughout our stay in school, she was by my side. I got to know everything about her. She was not only a very generous person but, also respectful. I began to call her my angel because she did what no one ever did for me. She told her father about my challenges and he offered to pay my school fees. Her mother was deceased.
At my graduation, he gave me N3m to add to my pay-off money from my master, who also was very supportive.
He also gave me my first shop. According to him, he assisted me because I reminded him of himself in his early days.
He equally gave me good contacts, which made me the huge success I am today.
Through all these, my parents never asked or bothered about me. They were only after my brother who graduated before me. They also treated my only sister with disdain, forcing her to marry a man old enough to be her father. They didn’t bother to sponsor her beyond primary school.
In keeping with tradition, when I wanted to marry, I went to inform them. From their response, I shouldn’t have bothered. It was my uncle and his wife who stood in as my parents. They took the backstage. Having prepared my woman and her father, they handled the situation well.
My brother didn’t bother to attend. My sister was my only sibling that did. After that, I decided to stay away from them. When my wife gave birth, it was my uncle’s wife that came to help with the set of twins. She became the mother I never had.
I don’t know what happened between my parents and my brother but, I only got to know through my sister who is now widowed, and back in school through the encouragement of my wife and I; that he sold off the family house to a bank leaving my parents stranded.
He is also nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, my parents have become squatters in the village.
The elders of the village led by my uncle have come pleading with me to forgive them and help them with accommodation. They want me to forget the past. My wife too has been pleading with me but, how can I forget their meanness or refusal to send me to school? How can I forget the undeserved beating, starvation, and their hatred for me? What did I do to deserve such treatment?
If it weren’t for my wife and her father, where would I have been today? Agatha, religion is one thing but, this is another. After the way they treated me at my wedding, I have sworn never to have anything to do with them again. This matter has been on for two months now, I really don’t know why I am writing to you or what I want you to say when I have already made up my mind not to listen to anybody on this issue but, I can’t help the force inside of me telling me to share it with you. Michael. Dear Michael, I sympathize with you and understand the deep struggle within you over the injustice of your parents’ treatment. I also understand the confusion, especially at being unable to fathom why they acted that way towards you and your sister.
Being their firstborn, their first son, if you decide to stand on the way they treated you from birth till date, none of the people begging would blame you because they all witnessed your pains, rejection and humiliation. Having gone through your story too, I won’t, if you stick to your guns not to help. After all, where were they when you needed them the most?
But where would such a hard-line posture leave you? What would you gain by repaying them with their bad coin? If you do that, you would have taken your pound of flesh, cleaning the slate and stripping yourself of the cover of mercy, God has wrapped you in through your years of struggles and now. God knew all about your pains hence dotted your path in life with people to help you realise His plans for you. He never included your parents among those to help you succeed. Their role in your life was only to give birth to you, carry you from heaven into the world.
What you should never forget is that those things, which are not included in the plans of God for His children, no matter how much we desire them, will never happen. Your parents didn’t have any reason to hate or reject you. If you ask them now, they will never be able to explain their indifference to you and your sister. They simply did it to fulfil the plans, which God has for you and your sister.
Your brother was the only one God wanted them to train. The situation in your family is meant to teach you and others lessons, an important one, that all children should be given the same level grounds by parents because nobody, except God knows which child would turn out to be useful in life. Not to forgive your parents is to tell God that He made a huge mistake with you, that all the while He was catering for your needs through the people He blessed you with, He was simply wasting time on you.
Showing love where there was once hatred is the only way to make complete God’s reasons for doing what He did in your family. Your parents have to learn this lesson too because nobody can tell the story better than the victim of a crime. You have to show them unconditional love and mercy in your relationship with God.
Being a Christian without demonstrating the attitude and attributes of God is an empty journey. Why do you still hold grudge when God has blessed you beyond curse, raised you above condemnation, and displaced the plans of man in your life?
Why are you still resentful when God has vindicated you above powers and principalities, and favoured you even beyond your imagination? The God you serve is one that strives in Love and specialises in absolute forgiveness and complete justice. Why else would He allow this to happen, if not to humble your parents before you?
Can you imagine their shame, disgrace and pains of having the child they invested so much on, placed all their hopes in, selling their home and exposing them to this humiliating experience in their old age?
They can’t come to beg you; the embarrassment would be too much for them, hence the interventions of the elders.
If for nothing else, consider this uncle who with his wife, always supported you like their own. Think of the grace of your wife and family? God has never for once left you to suffer, so you have no reason to be bitter.
Even if you don’t go to them, provide everything they need to be happy and comfortable within your means, else should they die before you forgive them, you would never be able to forgive yourself later in life. You may not suffer any repercussion whatsoever but, the conscience would never allow you be at perfect peace. Don’t, through your own folly, rob yourself of the peace and happiness you enjoy today.
Think, were your children to abandon you to fate, how would you feel? It may look impossible but, it can happen if that is the way God designed your end to be.
So make sure you provide your parents with a roof of their own. It is the least you can do for all the favours God has bestowed on you.
There is no way you can fight your own battle and win. Continue to hand over your battles in life to God because it is the only way you can continue to be on top of your enemies as well as situations in life. Hard as this appears, give yourself to God through prayers and He would provide you the grace to do right thing. Remember the fifth commandment, which says, “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you” (Exodus 20:12). This is what, He is demanding of you: honour your father and mother irrespective of what they did to you in the past!
Good luck.
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