THE STORY OF RICHARD COHEN’S SON, JARISH

(Richard Cohen, M.A. © GAY CHILDREN STRAIGHT PARENTS 2007; InterVasity Press)

Jarish wrote part of his life story for his youth group. I asked his permission to share it with you.

I was born into an atmosphere that no child wishes to be brought into; but alas, the past cannot be physically altered. My father was still a child inside (that is, emotionally, as most people in the world tend to be), as was my mother. He was struggling with a most grave problem: that of homosexuality. You may take it lightly, not being able to relate to it, but the reality is that he endured unfathomable pain and suffering in his heart and soul. And my mother was like a scared little girl. She was placed in an orphanage for a year when she was seven while her parents went of to do mission work in Korea back in the 1960’s. It scarred her for life.

I cannot recall the first point of detachment from my parents. All I know is that it happened, as it happens to so many of us, whether we know it or not and whether our parents know it or not. We conceal it from our parents. We give them the fake smiles, the fake love. Outwardly we are happy, but inside there is a voice of a child screaming, “I hate your guts! Be the father or mother you are suppose to be!” My father continuously worked on healing his heart, and my parents’ relationship began to mend. Meanwhile I continued to grow more numb to their love.

The weight of my hatred lay more with my father than my mother. On the one hand, I respected my father as someone who was doing more for God and the world than I saw any other man doing. Yes, there was a pride within me that he, this individual, was my father. However, there also lay within my heart another feeling toward this man. This concerned his role as father. I hated his guts as a father. He was a great individual for the world, but a horrible father to me, and more often than not, I hated him because of it. I could not bypass my feelings of anger and resentment, for I wanted him to be a father to me more than I wanted him to be a man who saved the world. A father who loves his son, I believe, in reality saves the world by saving his son’s life. And this love is irreplaceable.

I really started to fall away from my family in high school. I was so weak inside, so vulnerable to a world that is consumed with temporary fixes, temporary happiness and temporary love. Life had no meaning. Disillusionment resided within me. Life was just a means to a sad, horrible end, I figured. Emptiness is a horrible feeling. I wanted to die so badly. The relationship with my parents grew more and more superficial every day. When my father would ask me what I felt, I would say, “I feel nothing.” Translation: I am a numb, spiritually dead individual who cannot get in touch with himself. When you become that numb inside, feeling is but a luxury.

So, I took to the bottle. Alcohol, I loved alcohol. It made me feel something. I could escape my present reality and enter a world where I could act out all the indiscretions stuffed deep inside my heart. I felt happy, but soon I would return to that dull, empty baseline feeling the next morning (not to mention some wicked hangovers). I got involved with girls. I was searching for love. I could feel there too. No matter how much I convinced myself that this was true love, though, deep down inside I knew it wasn’t. I was trying to compensate for something I was dearly lacking. But no matter how hard I tried, I could not fill my heart with what it was I wanted so badly.

I really wanted to die. I would often ask God to send a car flying into mine so maybe it would have been an accident that I died. I remember sitting on the edge of a cliff, looking at the rocks below, and thinking to myself, Wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone could come along and push me off? Let this miserable life end. The fact of the matter was, my parents had been getting better the whole time and were trying to love me, but I could not feel it, partly because I was detached and partly because I had made an internal decision not to receive them into my life. I was hurt and wounded.

This progressed until I left to study abroad for a semester in England during my junior year in college. That is when my life was turned around. I woke up out of a deep slumber. It was as if someone had put defibrillators to my soul, cranked up the juice and pumped a thousand volts through me. I took a step back from all the girls, alcohol, partying and all the other meaningless crap that consumed my life and looked at myself. What I saw horrified me and touched me all at once: the endless cycle of trying to find happiness and love, but never being able to get a hold of it. Highs and lows. That’s all it was. I realized, Why not feel happy all the time? I had search to feel satisfaction and fulfillment in almost every avenue possible. There was only one answer that resounded in my heart and soul. The beginning was the end. I had to come full circle. My family, my parents, were the only answer.

I began talking to my parents more about life, God and Scripture. I became closer to them than I had ever been, and I was three thousand miles away! A great ocean can divide a son from his father and mother, but love can bridge even that expanse. I couldn’t wait to come home. I just rushed into my parent’s arms. I turned home a new person. I confessed all my wrongdoings to them, and I cried and cried with them. I was that little boy again, receiving the love that wasn’t available before.

One hundred eighty degrees. That is what happened to me. But life isn’t always so cut and dry. One still has to deal with all the pain and hurt. I must say that even after I had reformed myself, guilt rained down on me. Days would pass, and I would think of how bad a person I was. But it was my father and mother who truly liberated my heart. It took one comment from my dad to take away all my worries and guilt: “God doesn’t accuse. Satan accuses.” And I then realized how true his explanation was. It’s like that scene in Good Will Hunting when the therapist (Robin Williams), as a last resort, keeps saying to Will (Matt Damon), “It’s not your fault, Will...it’s not your fault...it’s not your fault.” That’s how it felt. And I cried and cried, realizing that God was not accusing me-he was embracing me.

In reconnection with my parents I did and still do practice some healing techniques. Back when I was in high school, our family had a session with a therapist who introduced the concept of “holding” and “attachment” work. This might sound out of the ordinary to you, or just bizarre. And mind you, it was the first couple of times. But the overall concept makes sense. My parents would hold me and just kiss my face until I’d crack and ask them to stop it. One can get extremely frustrated by this repeated action. It’s like Chinese water torture, but a lot more intimate. Of course, me, being the cocky fifteen- or sixteen-year-old I was at that time, thought that I would ignore it all and withstand it. Believe me, you have to be dead to withstand this type of therapy. Anyway, I definitely cracked, and out poured all of the sickness inside of me. Of course I didn’t like the whole affair one bit, as I was still struggling to find myself and my worth in this world.

These days, though, I willingly accept holding from my parents, because it feels good to release all the pain, anger and resentment stuffed inside for all those years. It’s okay to be angry with your parents. It’s okay to be resentful, because you are just a hurt child deep down inside who never received the warm love and affection you needed.

All children deserve 100 percent pure love. We deserve ideal parents. You cannot grow internally, emotionally, spiritually, without receiving love from your parents or parental figures. It’s like there’s an emotional cancer within every one of us, and we need to get it out. In addition to holding, I also just pound and yell into a pillow when I’m angry. This helps me release a lot of that pent-up anger and hurt. When I say, “Dad, Dad, Dad,” over and over again and recount the images of him not being there for me or yelling at me or hurting me, then the pain and hurt comes out naturally.  At the end of it all, I feel loved, I feel good. I feel a sense of worth.

When my father puts his arms around me and holds me and I just cry and cry, i’s what I always wanted deep down inside, no matter how much I tried to deny it. All I wanted was my father and mother to hold me and tell me they loved me and tell me how  good a person I am. That is what every child wants, and it’s because we grow up as wounded children (most of us) that we are reluctant to agree to such love, or feel uncomfortable in the situation I just described. But the truth is, deep down inside it is what we all longing for.

My desires for the temporary fixes of this world melt away when I received this type of love. And as I continued to heal my heart, they dissipate more and more. For as my dad says, “Healing is not a destination, it is a process.” It takes a lot of work to heal one’s heart, but I want it so badly so that I can become a better person for me, for God and for my wife.

My parents were truly God-like during the whole period of my inner turmoil. They set boundaries for my actions but did not directly interfere in my life. They only stood by me and offered me the most precious thing they had: their unconditional love. My dad once told me, “Jarish, I know we give you gifts, money, but it is all meaningless compared with the greatest gift we can give you, and that is love and healing in your life.” How right he is.

Now you must seriously ask yourself what or who is your rock? What is it that you can fall back on when you are in the pits of hell? My rock is my parents. They have always stood by my side, no matter how many times I damned them. My relationship with God soared because I felt the presence of god in my parents and through my parents. A key point to this is that my parents were willing to change for me. They were willing to do anything to melt my heart because they felt pained to see me so pained. I am a reflection of them, and when the son hurts, the father and mother also hurt.

These days when I see my father, I feel so much of God through him. He is doing awesome things for God in this world. He is a great individual for this world. And finally, what I respect and cherish even more than that is that he is a great father to me! I can finally say that the love felt between us is indescribable. It transcends life itself. I finally have a father who will hold me, who will tell me he loves me, who will tell me I am worth something, who will get down on one knee and tearfully repent to his son for all the heartache that he has caused him in his life. Do you know how that feels? To have a parent who will ask for forgiveness, even though much of the pain he caused he couldn’t help. That is when the word parent actually has meaning behind it. That’s when a parent actually becomes areal parent, a true parent.

As I write these words, they come very slowly and painfully. Tears run down my face, as I cannot contain the feelings and images that has shaped my life. It hurts when you are not loved, do not feel loved or accepted. I see my former self: hurt, broken , struggling to find love, happiness. I see my present self: so beautiful, healing every day, restoring everything that had been broken – pulling weeds and planting seeds within my soul and psyche. I see my future self: perfect, happy, loved, giving love. I am a good person. I am God’s precious child. I finally feel loved. I truly feel it. It’s as i all of heaven and earth could pass away but I would still be alive because God and true love resides within me.