I Can Only Imagine

I’ve struggled a lot lately with how much of the truth I tell my sons about my childhood.
There have been a lot of questions, as they are of they age they want to know and ask things.

But how much do you tell? I’ve talked with friends that are a lot smarter than I am and more importantly, focus on child psychology and they have said to share what I fell comfortable with.

But that really didn’t help. The truth is this, my childhood was not that great. That is just a fact. But to what point do they need to know? And that I do not have an answer? And more importantly, it is something that I have struggled a lot with of late.

Watching the movie I Can Only Imagine brought a lot of feelings and thoughts to the forefront of my life. Was I hit with a plate, no, but did that movie hit way too close to home, yes. Do my kids need to know this about my past? Probably not. And probably not, I mean no.

As a parent, my job is to protect my kids. Not lie to them, but maybe not share all of the truth. When asked, I can say that things were not great in my childhood and shift the focus of the conversation to something else. Because what good does telling the truth do?

From my friends in the psychology world, they have talked with me at great lengths about breaking history and I usually laugh, because they know me better than that. The cycle of abuse has been broken. But the truth about my childhood to me, ends with me.

My son’s have asked a lot lately about my father and I just smile and try to answer as best I can. Sometimes, I lie. Is that fair to them, no. But is telling them the truth fair to take away the innocence of their view of their grandfather? Telling the truth does not help them in anyway and that is ok!

I’ve started for the first time in my life, dealing with what was my childhood. In doing so, it has also made me realize a lot of things too. Some of those things are not good either!

So today, as my kids ask me about my childhood, I give them shades of the truth, in hopes that it protects them from the truth and it helps me process it at the same time.

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If you haven’t taken the time to go and see the new movie that was just released, I Can Only Imagine, you should. The song, which is based on the Christian band MercyMe and the life of Bart Millard.

The movie takes you from the lowest of the lows to the highest of highs and somewhere in between and without a doubt will change your life. Throughout the movie, I held my wife’s hand tighter, as I was seeing glimpse of my life on the movie screen.

As my wife walked out of the movie theater, we were both in silence and I could tell she wanted to ask me something. I could tell she was really struggling to find the right words, as she had tears just coming down her face. And it was after we cleared the building and were almost to the vehicle, she asked how much of that I had lived through?

Through tears and for the first time in my 11 year relationship with my wife, I discussed things about my childhood with her for the first time. And through the movie, it opened a dialogue and it gave me hope for the future and confirmed my thought that my past will not define me.

As I am learning on a daily basis, our past, does not mean that it will be our future. It can be, but if we choose to do something differently, we will. And in seeing the movie and seeing how the father was transformed into a better person, I just sat in awe.

Today, is a new day. A new chapter. The challenge is how do we live our life today?

 

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