Root of Bitterness

Hebrews 12:15 talks about a “root of bitterness” defiling many. For most people, this verse is a pretty obscure corner of the Bible, but not for me. My whole life has been lived in the tangle and taproots of bitterness. I come by it honestly though. My family taught me the practical implications of this principle and I have fear that somehow I may not have learned its lesson.

My earliest recollections are of uncomfortable Christmas Eve’s spent at my maternal grandparents’ house. I could feel the stress emanating from my parents as we drove to Tucson to do our Yuletide duty. As horrible as it seems, I hated my time at Grandma and Grandpa’s. My dad’s quick admonition as we drove into their driveway, “We’re getting out of here as soon as possible. Do you understand?” Two hours of hell, watching my Grandfather sip on his highball and glower as he looked at my mom and dad was almost too much for a little kid to handle.

Somewhere in my youth the pressure stopped. I never saw my grandfather for another ten years. I really didn’t understand until much later what was going on. My mom was the third oldest in a family of six. She lived in a traditional Roman Catholic home, with a good dose of ritual and dark realities. My mom was raped by her oldest brother when she was just a little girl. It seems that my granddad didn’t react properly to the situation, because my mom escaped at her first opportunity.

Her escape route was marrying my dad when she was only seventeen. It seems like both my mom and dad used each other to avoid unpleasant situations at home. Dad, it seems was a ne’er-do-well student that wanted his father’s approval. He was the middle child in a family with an over-achieving father and an athletic little brother. He spent much of his time alone, riding his horse and never made any close friends.

If you asked either of my parents about their place in this world and what reality is, I am sure you would get very different conclusions from those I am drawing. I think that must be the insidious nature of bitterness. Part of the defilement is to cloud your mind and obscure your view of what is really happening.

In May of 1984 my parents divorced after 27 years. My mom would never have divorced my dad. Her Catholic upbringing would never have allowed for that. She would have been miserable and made my dad’s life even more miserable. She would have kept her marriage vows until everyone involved welcomed the death that those vows contractually terminated.

My dad had bigger fish to fry. He had climbed on Mom’s back until he could see daylight. He was a small car dealer in a small town in southern Arizona. He lived life in the light green haze of envy every time he visited the big city. He wanted to be a BIG city dealer. Once when my cousin was doing a report for his Harvard MBA, he interviewed my dad. “What do you consider to be the measure of success?” “RESPECT!” My dad would have traded his life, money and family for respect. As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what he did. In 1984 Dad finally got his BIG dealership in Phoenix. . .

(TO BE CONTINUED)