Meridian Magazine

Closing Up a Childhood Wound
by Chris Hall

I had a mess in the closet in my heart. Then one day... I went to the Lord and asked him to help me clean out the mess. He said he would.

My father was a good man. He taught me many truths about life. To this day I rely on so many of the things he taught me. However he was also a volatile and angry man, carrying a bitter edge clear from his childhood. Many times as I grew up, he said and did things in the heat of anger that wounded me deeply. I carried the pain of those wounds with me into my adult life. Although I managed to deal with all the confusion and hurt for many years, in my late thirties feelings began to emerge in me that I didn't recognize, didn't know how to deal with, and certainly didn't want. I would find myself watching the tender relationships between many fathers and daughters with a sense of longing that often gave way to heartache and tears. Many times a movie or song would release all my feelings again. The worst part of all was that those feelings often lead to deep anger at my father for the abuse we had experienced as children, mixed with a sense of loss for a relationship that I longed for, but had never known.

I began reading and studying, searching for answers that would give me help and peace. I read books, attended seminars, searched the scriptures, fasted and prayed, that my heart would be changed, and that the angry feelings which were now so prevalent would leave. And slowly as the years went by, the wound began to close. It seemed it didn't hurt as much as it once did.

Then one morning as I sat in a session at the Jordan River Temple, I reflected on the healing I had experienced during the past seven or eight years. I marveled at the change in me, and how far I had come. Yet, I was still very much aware that the wound in my heart, though much smaller, was still there. In a moment, I was overcome, not just with the desire to have it closed completely, but with a perfect faith that if I asked the Lord in that sacred place to heal my pain once and for all, he could and would do it. I knew the timing was right. I knew I had done everything I could to work through it on my own, and as I approached the concluding ordinance of the session, I asked the Lord for this blessing that I might move on. That morning in the temple, I had one of the most spiritual experiences of my life. I was overwhelmed with the sense of my Father in Heaven's love for me, and that he had heard my prayer. I realized as I left the temple that the wound was still there, but I left it in the Lord's hands, trusting his timing. I felt a sense of peace.

One morning several weeks later, I was driving when a song came over my car radio that touched a chord in me. It was a song about the relationship of a man and his father, and I began to weep. I cried all the way home, and as I drove, the Spirit whispered to me to go to New York and see my dad for Father's Day. At first I felt uneasy about it. I was never really comfortable being with him. I was always on edge and never knew what to say. But the feeling persisted, and a gentle voice reminded me that I had prayed for the wound to close. I talked to my husband, who was wonderfully supportive. Next, I called my oldest sister in California and told her of my plan, and before I had finished asking her, she answered that she would love to go with me. She was pleased that I was trying to bring all of my healing efforts to a conclusion, and knowing I would never quite make it alone, said she would love to accompany me. We called our other sister, who lived about three hours from my dad, and invited her to go with us. We said it would be a sister's retreat, and we would have a great time. She agreed to go with us.

I can still remember my feelings at the Salt Lake Airport that morning. I stood with my husband, feeling very vulnerable and apprehensive, and yet knowing that this was exactly what I was supposed to do. I said to him, "Thank you so much for all you're doing at home to make this possible for me to go. I wish I could explain why I have to go, but I'm not sure I can."

He wrapped his arms around me for one last hug and said quietly, "I know why you have to go. It's called completion."

The Trip Home

My sisters and I left early in the morning the Saturday before Father's Day for the drive to my dad's. We talked and laughed the three hours away, catching up on the recent events of our lives. Though none of my family are members of the church, my sisters and I share a unique spiritual bond, and many tender feelings were expressed. As we approached the farm in southern New York, a feeling of anxiety began to set it. Yet I knew the Lord had led me this far on the journey, and I trusted him to take me wherever I needed to go.

My dad was happy to see us and welcomed us warmly. He had made bean soup for us for lunch, and we sat down to eat. We hadn't been eating very long, when my dad walked up beside me. "You see that spoon you're eating with? Turn it over and look at the date." The sterling silver spoon was from a collection my grandmother owned that I remembered from my childhood. On the back were engraved my grandmother's initials and the date, 1908. My father continued, "It's one of the last ones we have, and when you're done eating, I want you to slip it into your purse." I was touched by this simple gift. My father rarely gives gifts, and just a few months earlier, I had mentioned to my husband how much I wished I had a few of my grandmother's things.

As we finished lunch Dad told me that he wanted to show me something upstairs. I loved going upstairs in that old farmhouse. The house had been in our family since the mid-1800's. My grandmother was born in that home in 1888 and died there in 1993. My father had lived in it since her death the year before. Although in a run-down condition, the farm had always been a magical place for me, filled with mementos of many generations, and the upstairs bedrooms were crammed with old, dusty treasures. I followed him into the small bedroom at the back. He moved boxes out of his way and opened the big steamer trunk that had been in the corner of that room for as long as I could remember. He lifted out a large frame and turned it over. "I want you to have this" he said with great emotion. "This is how it all began." He placed in my hands a very old, ornate frame. It was my great-grandparents wedding certificate, with two tin-type pictures of them on their wedding day. It was dated 1875.

What happened next is still difficult to explain, but there, in that tiny upstairs bedroom, the Lord answered my prayers . For in an instant, as we stood there together, I felt a change in me. I felt close to my father in a way I had never known. It was as if a funnel was pouring knowledge and understanding into my mind. There were so many feelings coming to me all at once that I almost couldn't process them. What I did understand and recognize was the presence of the Spirit, and I began to weep.

I was overcome with emotion and desperately wanted to reach out and hug him and have him wrap his arms around me and hold me, as I had yearned for all my life. But I could not. I knew he would not know how to handle it, and that it would spoil this precious moment. And so I let it be enough. In that moment great understanding about my father filled my soul, about who he was and what he had come from. The Spirit whispered to me, "Chris, he cannot give you what he has never known." And I let the wound close.

Cleaning a Closet

Later that summer I was working one morning with our eight- year-old twin daughters, trying to get them to clean their room and their closet. They did a fair job with the room, but the closet was a mess. Despite my encouragement that they could do it, they just kept whimpering that they couldn't. They complained it was just too big a mess. So much of the stuff was old, but they didn't know what to throw away, and some of the junk in there wasn't even theirs. They begged me to help them, so I went in their room to see how bad this really was.

As I sat down on the floor in front of their closet, I began to understand why they were so frustrated. This was a mess, and they really did need my help. I agreed to help them if they would follow two rules. First, they had to do what I asked them to do, willingly. If I asked them to take a pair of shoes to their sister's closet, then they had to do it happily. Second, they had to stick with it until the job was done.

I knew what needed to be done, and so, as the morning went on, I sent them from one room to another, returning things out of place, getting a box, or a garbage bag, and then returning to see what I needed them to do next. I helped them sort through their clothes, discarding what they no longer needed or had outgrown. We reorganized their Barbie collection with its hundreds of accessories into smaller, easier to sort containers. They grew tired. They wanted to play. This was taking too long. Would I just finish it myself? At one point, with everything pulled out of the closet and spread all over their floor, it looked like a bigger mess than when we had started. Then slowly, things began to get better. We began to see order grow out of the confusion, and when at last it was completed, they were delighted with how nice everything looked.

As they left to go and play, I reflected for a few minutes at what had just transpired. I began to feel a familiar pattern to the morning's work.

Years earlier, I had a mess in the closet in my heart. In that closet was all kinds of junk that I didn't want or need, and it was cluttering up my life. Some of it was there because I had brought it in, some of the feelings and confusion were put there by others in their angry moments. They were hurtful things, but not knowing what to do with them, I put them on a shelf in my closet and closed the door. Over the years I gathered quite a collection. Then one day, I realized that my closet was so full of feelings of anger and hurt, and disappointment over things that never were, that I went to the Lord and asked him to help me clean out the mess. He said he would. He would help me with the job which was too overwhelming to do alone. As the years went on, I tried to do all that I felt prompted to do to clean out my closet. I studied, prayed, and often fasted for help in my project, and slowly, over the years, it got better, but it was never finished. I grew tired of waiting. I wanted this to be done. I wanted to do other things. Then came that morning in the temple, when I asked in faith for the closet to be cleaned out once and for all, knowing and believing that it would happen, but went home before it was done.

Then came the prompting: "Go back to New York for Father's Day," and I went, not knowing the job was almost finished.

Years have passed since that trip home. I still marvel at the power of the atonement. I am amazed at the love Jesus offers me and each one of us. I have come to know for myself that his atoning sacrifice does not just cover our individual mistakes and sins. It also covers the pain of others' sins against us, and in ways we do not understand makes us whole again. I have come to understand at a very deep level these past few years that the atonement is what makes life just. We are not all raised in similar circumstances. Things happen to some children and to some adults that should never happen to anyone. Life isn't fair. But as we come unto Christ and allow him to heal our hearts, he can make it right again and give us new life.

I learned that lesson one quiet summer morning as I sat in our daughters' newly cleaned closet.

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