THE STOLEN CHILDHOOD

Many of us were robbed of our childhood. We never experienced real childhood because someone stole our innocence away from us. We were never allowed to be a child before being rushed into adulthood. We were given too much responsibilities very early, our toys were taken away from us very quickly and our innocence was snatched away painfully.

When we needed love, they gave us responsibilities. When we needed approval, they heaped condemnation. When we needed acceptance, they pointed to our faults! 

Our development men is shaped by the things we encountered as children. What each of us will eventually become will be shaped or influenced by the people who parented us and the environment we grew up in.

What painful childhood memories haunt you? Who took away your innocence? What domestic abuse were you exposed to? What images kept replaying themselves in your skull? What are the voices drowning your dreams and lowering your self-esteem? What remembrance stir pain and regret?

Was it fatherlessness, abuse, starvation, molestation or broken homes? How badly have you been wounded? The fact you need to understand is that wounded men are dangerous men. Wounded men must wound people. Wounded men are the prime focus of predators because their defenses are weak! They have been crippled!

When the mind of a child is stressed with harsh issues like molestation, abuse or domestic violence, it produces a mental hernia that is visible in the character of the child for the rest of his life.

I sincerely believe childhood wisdom is the most dangerous of all especially in the mind of an adult.

I can understand it when a child behaves like a child, thinks like a child and understands like a child. I am astounded when grown ups carry childhood mentality into adulthood.

The first beneficiary of such mentality is the usually the wife. And the children will be the ultimate victims of that manner of life.

You can survive a bad tailor, you can manage a poor barber and you can endure an abusive conductor, but you can never survive a man or a father with childhood wounds and wisdom.

Any prison warden will tell you that behind those iron bars is one big playground filled with restless men who found solace in crime. They didn’t become restless men by their own making, they became restless men because somebody tampered with their childhood. When you see a lady dressing half naked on the street and saying it does not matter, it is not her fault, someone has stolen her innocence. Her childhood had been tampered with.

Criminals and prostitutes are pictures of collective failures. They are the picture of a father that has failed. The picture of a mother that has failed. The picture of a system that has failed, the picture of an institution that has failed and the picture of a church that has failed.

One of the ways to redeem a stolen childhood is to admit reality. There is difference between denying reality and ignoring reality. One brings healing, the other brings pain. Let the streams of Gods healing flow through your heart. Two, surrender to strong fathering. Weak fathering destroys strength. You can find strong fathering in a Pastor and if you marry right, in your husband.

Then learn to enjoy every phase of your life. Marriage is not burden-alleviation program. Don’t expect your husband or wife to be a burden bearer such that you bring all the garbage of your bruises, pains and abuses to the marriage table and expect him or her to bear it too. Don’t make your family a company of misery. Yes, marriage must be a sort of comfort; but it is simply unfair to make your spouse the dumping ground of your calamities. And one of the most fatal mistake is to rush into marriage with the hope of escaping painful memories and hurts. It never works!

I will recommend books by Joyce Meyer especially, ‘Managing your Emotions.’ It will open you up to new paradigms in emotional healing.

I sincerely believe we all have the resilience to outlive our past if we flung wide the doors of our heart for healing. And healing is not an event; it is a process that requires patience and time.