Abuse, Abuser, Abused

How to move from being a victim to a victor.

I was going through one of the Nigerian dailies recently, and there was an article of a man that was sentenced to death for armed robbery and rape. He disposed two nurses of their valuables in the hospital they were working and raped the younger of them. To the western worlds who are trying to outlaw the capital punishment, these will be called a barbaric judgment; to some, his crime should not have carried such a hash judgment and to many others, he got what he deserved. I really will not pass my judgment on this issue; I believe that he will appeal and his case will get to the Supreme Court that will finally give the last verdict. I am more concerned about how a man can go so low as raping another human; it never cease to amaze me how people can go into these act. However, I have come to a conclusion that the statement, hurting people hurt others, people who have being abused, abuse others is true.

The cry crucify him is a common sound to hear when an ‘abuser’ is caught; everyone seems to want him/her to be hanged on a noose. I feel though that if you hear the story of the abuser you will hear a story that is often than not of someone who has gone through an abuse too. When a person has gone through an abuse, there is a psychological effect on him/her that is far more destructive than the abuse that the person has gone through. The emotional impact is usually destructive; they usually suffer from low self esteem, get angry with the world, blame themselves often time for what happened to them and are often withdrawn. Many of them don’t go for help, but assume that the pain will go away over time since they have being made to believe that wound heal over time. They end up abusing their children, and the abuse continues. Some don’t physically abuse their children in the way they were, but treat them in such a way that the children become negatively psychologically affected by the person who should freely love them.

Can abuse ever end in our world? My answer is a NO. It’ll never end, but you can end it in your family and to people around you by learning how to love and walking in love; love is a powerful medicine that can turn the victim of an abuse to a victor. The question in the mind of someone reading this article will be how can I love the person that has abused me? How can I ever let go of the things that I have gone through? Do you really know how it’s like to go through all that I have gone through in the hand of my abuser? My answer to the last question is I really don’t know how it’s like to be abused, neither have I gone through what you have gone through. But if you will ever make a head long movement in life that will stop your children from becoming an abuser, you have to learn to walk in love.

The kind of love that I am asking you to walk in can’t be achieved by your efforts; it’s possible that you have gone through clinical treatments for a solution to your pain yet have found out that it produced little result. The way to be free comes from allowing the love of God flow in you, and through you to others. Though I haven’t gone through an abuse, but I have gone through an experience that had a negative effect on the way I saw myself for years; my dad was very comfortable at a time in his life time, but after a while became mentally unstable all through his life time. It affected his children in different ways, but for me it gave a low self image effect. My healing began with making a commitment to Jesus, accepting his Lordship over my life and experiencing his love.

One of the mistakes that the abused make is that they turn their back on God and blame Him for not giving them deliverance in the time their abuser was abusing them. God is seen as the enemy instead of the way out; to them, if he loves me why did I have to go through that experience. The truth is that He loves you; He knows your pain and wants you to open the door of your heart instead of shutting Him out. Jesus went through an abuse too, yet He still loves and is interested in anyone who has gone through an abuse experience. He knows how it feels like when it seems that God has forsaken someone despite the clarity of His power. If you ever want to be a victor, you will need to turn your pain, anger and sorrow to Him, because people who have experienced love will give love.

Femi Fasanya

relationshipmatters@gmail.com

08037257479, 08083906405

My cry to fathers

A king, realizing his incompetence, can either delegate or abdicate his duties. A father can do neither. ~ Marlene Dietrich

I was recently having a discussion with a young man who had gotten married not long ago; thank God for MTN free night call. My advice to him was the need to guard his family from the past mistakes; I said to him, there is a thin line that divides the past from the present and the present from the future.

Really if a father don’t walk in this consciousness, it’s easy for him to repeat the mistakes of his own father. I guess some of the readers of this column may in time past had called their fathers irresponsible and a bad example for his children. Yet inside of everyone is the likeness of the man who gave birth to them; I feel that our children just as we assessed our own dads will be the one who will make conclusions about us too.

My cry to fathers in today’s column is, don’t repeat the mistakes of your father. Life is like a vicious cycle; history when it’s not learnt from always repeats itself. However, the impact of the repetition of history is often at a varying degree to that of the present; that of the present is far worst.

I will want every father that will read this column to do reminiscence of the past and learn from the parenting approach of their parents; they should objectively look at the constructive and negative impact of how they were brought up. Permit me to say that you can learn from the past, but it can be a colossal mistake to use the approach of your parents in the change of present trend of event. For instance, it’s wrong to impose on your children the course they ought to study; the wife they should get married to by imposing cultural superiority on them; turn your children against other cultures, etc.

Years back, I can quite remember up till date going to friend’s house and been treated by his father like an enemy because I am a Yoruba and they were Igbo (some Igbos’ have had similar experience too). The civil war thing just keeps living in the heart of many parents and they keep passing the hatred on from generation to generation. Even in the Yoruba culture, there are tribes who consider it a taboo to get married to people from a particular tribe, thus ethnic problem still exist in many states in the nation- Nigeria.

If a child has biasness for a group or culture, 80% of the time it was educated into him/her by his/her father. The father is the one that unconsciously educate his children on love, respect for humanity and the law. He is the major influencer of his family. Many of the hatreds that are still growing in our world today are because the children had been taught to hate by a father who was living under some hurt and bitterness of an experience. Some fathers merely followed what their fathers taught them without asking questions. Some fathers because they are not conscious of observing past events in their family had repeated far worse than what their own fathers had done. The reality is that it leaves a negative impact on the lives of their children. Here is the story that I believe will help buttress my point…

Kemi at the early stage of life grew in a home where there was love and care richly shared by her parents to one anther and to the children. She could still remember how her dad will come home after a tiring days work, but yet spend some time with them finding out how they were doing with their academics and getting to her them talk about all the exciting events that they had gone through in the day. She would see her dad, that his birth each day and eat his meals with praises to his wife. The only challenge that the family had then was finance; though their dad was had working, yet he just was making a enough money to meet the needs of the home. She could remember the number of times that her school fee was not paid in time and she and her siblings were sent home. Yet the peace and joy at home was something that remains strong in her heart until things change for the better for her dad.

Luck shown on her dad when he got promoted to head the Abuja branch of their office; the financial challenge they had became a thing of the past. However, some other things also became the thing of the past; her dad was rarely ever available at home, his excuse was that the job has become more tasking and demanding. He saw no reason for his family to move down with him to Abuja, giving excuses that weren’t tenable. Not afterwards, a friend of mum came with the news that dad was having an extra marital affair; when mum confronted him on the issue, he bluntly denied it. Three years after getting his appointment in the federal capital, he came home with one of his brothers to inform mum that he has taken another wife who has a child for him already.

Not long ago, I observe that the family he came from is polygamous. His father and three of his four male siblings also trail that part; their story is that when things get better financially for them, they end up with a second or more other wives. My fear presently is that I am dating a guy that his father is polygamous, and I haven’t been able to take the relationship because of the fear of the past.

The question I will like to ask you as father is, what do you want your children’s future to be like? Irrespective of how much money you are spending on them, what they will eventually become is who you are in many ways. Break the cycle of event that you don’t like from the way you grew up and let your own child have a clean break because they represent the outcome of the future.

Olufemi Fasanya
08037257479, 08083906405