Your words are encouraging about forgiveness.
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My son's father died when he was 3yo. I raised him alone. And I found out MANY years later that his father was quite a pervert.
Howdy!
Your tale is a touching one. I feel your pain, and wish I had wisdom sufficient to help you in some way.
I am not so blessed with ability that I can do much other than offer feeble words of solace.
Forgiveness is part of the process. But forgiveness is only part of it.
There must also be an epiphany on the part of the young man.
He needs to awaken one day, realizing that he made decisions that led him to his situation.
And upon the heels of such realization, experience a profound and life changing regret leading to repentance.
I know these words are not fashionable in modern parlance, but unless he can face his own demons and understand role in his own destruction, forgiveness can't change his life. The same applies for the father (whom I see described as a pervert) who may have cried out for forgiveness in his final hour. Nobody can know that, nor can we judge what his final thoughts were as his life ended.
What I do know, much from personal experience, is that the individual responsible for their crimes must also face the monster they see in the mirror and overcome that thing by a profound combat with the demon inside. Not all can do this. You'll hear of jail-house conversions, and often people in the penal system will proclaim they've turned their life around through a spiritual awakening. Next thing you know, they're back into the penal system because they haven't exorcised the original problem.
The dark night of the soul is a phrase often used to describe a real, profound, life changing confrontation with the id. That phrase is far too glib to describe a true conversion of an errant personality disorder. The actual process is a mind, spirit and heart wrenching process that the individual can only accomplish when willing to do so. It isn't easy, isn't quick, isn't clean and tidy. It is a process that may produce many dark nights spent weeping for the things they've done, and regret (true and profound regret) for those they've harmed. A realization, right down to the spirit level, that they've become a monster by mote of free will. Only a similiar decision of free will can eradicate the monster and restore a person to a whole human being. This sort of conversion, from monster to humanity; transcends religion, soars above fear of punishment, and beyond psychology. It must come from the essence of a man or woman, not from a superficial level of being. It cannot be imposed from without, but must come from within!
You've had a taste of it yourself. Your question of 'where did I go wrong' likely came on a ruthless self examination of your own. You've spent many tearful nights examining your own heart and soul. You've explored some dark places within yourself, and faced a few things you cannot speak. Not to anybody! Those things exist in all of us. Most of us learn to control and seal those things off. We create a virtual brick wall to contain those secret things. In the case of your son, however, drug abuse allowed him to tear down that wall and embrace the darkness within. To heal, it must be rebuilt. And that is a price more profound than any jail can impose. He may one day walk out of jail, but can never walk away from himself, any more than any of us can. Unless he can challenge that darkness he's embraced, battle it, overcome it, he might just as well stay in jail. But one who undertakes the ordeal of transformation of his essential self will endure without bars. They can salvage themselves, become an asset to humanity, and walk in freedom despite incarceration.
Easy? Not in any way shape or form. Possible, only to those who undertake the ordeal.
There is a concept of death and rebirth here, and that's about what it takes.
I know something whereof I speak.
To be the man I am, the man I was had to die! I had to kill him. I had to destroy what was in order to build what would become.
It is my belief that nobody is beyond redemption. But redemption is costly.
Forgiveness is necessary, sure enough. But without redemption, it merits little.
And redemption comes only when we willingly lay seige to who we are, and put to death the person we've become, so that a new human being can emerge from a tomb of their own making and walk a totally different path.
You have my prayers and support.
But nothing is more powerful than hope.
Hang onto your hope, and pray that he faces that dark night of contrition.
I do not intend to espouse religious or mystical ideas related to any specific theology or psychology here.
I just know that your situation is all too familiar, and few take up the challenge.
But at the end of the day, nobody is beyond redemption. That includes your son.
Just as he made wrong decisions that put him in bondage,
new decisions, based on the brutal struggle to change at the most profound level of being,
will set him free.
Blessings,
M-Taliesin