A Personal Journey of Discipline, Forgiveness, and Reconciliation

Posted by Jason Gilbert

Hello everyone,

I am going to post about something very personal today!! I hope that you can see that this was and still is a very personal journey that I am undergoing.

I am going to try to make this as short as I can. So, to make a long story short from the get go, I had a good friend that I hurt very deeply with my actions. I moved out west about 5 years ago now and lived there for about 3 years and had a good friend (let’s call him Mark for the sake of this post) that I was good friends with and lived with for almost a year when I first moved out there. He welcomed me into his family and made me a part of the family, even inviting me along to family dinners at the in-laws. I felt like part of a second family. Mark believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself and even introduced me to mentorship to help better myself!! He was and still is my best friend.

So, you are probably wondering where this story is going. Well, let’s just say that my friend Mark was helping me through some struggles with addiction that I was working on, but this accountability eventually put stress on our friendship. I stopped being accountable to him and worse yet, I stopped talking to him altogether and started to actively avoid him. I ended up moving back to Ontario (Canada) where my immediate family lived still. But the crappy thing was I never even told my friend I was moving back home and didn’t even call him to let him know. I just left without ever really telling him.

Well, as you can probably imagine I became crippled with guilt, shame, and regret for the way I had acted. It was no exaggeration to say that I hated myself for what I did. Unfortunately, instead of pushing me to correct this problem it only pushed me further into depression and I waited five long years to correct this problem. Shame on me!!

Now, I cannot name drop, but I have been corresponding with a good friend that has been helping me to deal with this issue. She has made me face what I did and didn’t hold back on making me very aware that what I had done was very unacceptable and should never have happened, let alone gone for 5 years without making amends. I am so grateful for her stern words to me and making me face what I had done, but not to heap more shame on me, but to make me face it so that I could get over it. Yes, this did involve a spanking and I still have one more to go. She prescribed a very stern and strict spanking that was suited to my misdeeds and a line writing assignment and it helped me come to terms with what I had done. She also instructed me to write an apology note to my friend and to read it to him when we talked again.

The Spanking:

The spanking itself was fairly involved with corner time, scolding, reflection time at the end, and a lengthy spanking involving both hairbrush, spoon, and belt.  It left my bottom very sore, but never have I felt so free afterwards.  It was both emotially painful to think about my friend and all that I did to hurt him and how I friendship had been greatly stressed and fractured, as well as the physical pain of  the actual spanking.  But the pain of the spanking was nothing when compared to the feelings of guilt, shame and regret that had been plaguing me for the last 5 years.

The spanking itself was intense, but I am so grateful for and what my friend (my disciplinarian) did by making me face what I had done to my best friend Mark and how my actions had hurt him.  She also made me face the fact that five years have passed and this has earned me a second spanking, which I have not yet received as I have not been afforded the privacy necessary to do so.  I will keep you appraised of when this discipline is able to take place.

Forgiveness and Reconciliation:

I am thankful that I can tell you that since my spanking and writing this note to my friend, I have had the chance to talk to my friend and read my letter of apology to him. He was already more than willing to forgive me, in fact he already had. I think it is just as much about me forgiving myself. We have talked one more time after my first phone call where I read my apology letter. It almost felt like old times, just talking about life. I still can’t help feeling regret about how much time I let pass before I reached out to my friend to make amends, but I am happy to say that I feel like a great burden has been lifted from my heart and I feel a freedom I haven’t felt in a long time!!

I wanted to share this story as it relates to spanking, but also for anyone that has ever struggled with guilt and shame over their mistakes. Don’t do like I did and let five years go by without making it right. Guilt and shame can crush you and lead you into deep depression. I know because I was there. But it is a story that ends with a message of hope!! Be encouraged that you can find forgiveness and learn to forgive yourself with time and effort!!

Lastly, if you are wondering why I still have one spanking left for this whole ordeal, well I will briefly explain. I got my first spanking for what I did to my friend. The one remaining spanking is for waiting for five years and I have to say it is well earned. I am just waiting for some privacy at home to do it. I will keep you appraised!!

Thanks for listening!! Questions are welcomed!!

Also, I have shared this same story on my forum, so if you would prefer to comment there, then please do.  Here is the link to the forum:

https://www.voy.com/249741/2011.html

Also, for anyone interested, I am going to include the apology letter to my friend.  I have edited to be web appropriate, and names have been changed to protect my friend’s identity.  I wanted to share that here, even if it is deeply personal because I think it can be important to be vulnerable at times.  I want you guys to know that I am human and have made some pretty big mistakes.  I wanted to share this deeply personal journey of how I am finding new hope in my future as I work towards becoming a better person, but that starts with acknowledging my faults and failures and not burying them or just sticking my head in the sand.  So, for those interested, this is the letter of apology that I read aloud to my friend Mark when I talked to him!!  Thanks for allowing me to share this personal journey with you!!

Apology Letter to Mark

Dear Mark,

I am writing this letter to you today because I need to ask for your forgiveness.  I know this letter is long overdue, but I want you to know that I have been having these feelings for quite some time.  Years ago, I behaved very badly and I wronged you.  Today, I would like to set out an apology to you because you deserve that, and because you are closer than a brother to me and I value our friendship.

You are my best friend.  Barely a day goes by that I don’t think about you.  I am so grateful for all you did when I moved out west.  You let me move in with you, you helped me get up on my feet, and you believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself.  You introduced me to mentorship and coaching and opened my eyes to what is possible for someone willing to put in the time and effort to better oneself.  I am so thankful for the opportunities that you provided for me that opened up a hope for my future!!

On a more personal note, you also made me a part of your family.  Inviting me and including me in some of your family events, like dinners at your in-laws place, going with you to pick out a Christmas tree.  By including me in these activities you made me feel like I was a part of your family.  This made the distance of living away from my immediate family to be much more bearable, and it was like I had a second family.  There are so many memories that I can’t list them all, memories that bring a smile to my face.  Memories like looking at Christmas lights on Candy Cane Lane, working on my car together (fixing its many problems), going to our mentorship meetings together.  Theses memories and many more remind me of the joy and hope I had with living out west, so close to my best friend!!

But these same memories also fill me with profound sadness.  I should be able to look back on these great times that I lived out west with joy, but instead I am filled with guilt, shame, and regret over the way that I ended things.  As I have already said before, your friendship and your encouragement brought me hope.  I still look back at my years out west as some of the best years of my life, and so much of that is due to your encouraging me to get outside my comfort zone.  I felt more alive when I was challenging myself, and you were helping push me along and encourage me when I needed it.  I felt more alive when I lived out west then I did before that and certainly since then.  In fact, over the last few years I have started to feel dead inside.  I go from feeling nothing to feeling deep sorrow for hurting my closest friend.  I am working through these feelings and there are people helping me get that help, but I also feel a deep longing and a need to set things right with you.

You were and still are my best friend Mark.  You always believed in me when I didn’t even believe in myself.  You held me accountable with some tough stuff, but I stopped reaching out.  I caused a wedge between us and I hurt you far more than any friend should.  I don’t have a right to ask you to forgive me, but I am going to ask anyway.  I know I have texted you about these things in the past, but that doesn’t count, because that is the coward’s way out.  I am done with being a coward.  I am praying for the Lord’s strength to reach out to you and to put things right.  I know that things may never be as they were before between us, but I hope and pray that we can find our way back to a friendship.

You are as close as a brother and it hurts that you are no longer in my life at all.  I realize people have seasons of life, and I am not asking that we talk every week or anything, but I don’t want things to stay the way they are between us.  Please forgive me for being a selfish, prideful man who lacked the integrity to talk to you face to face before he moved back to Ontario!!  Please forgive my procrastination in letting five years go by before I made this apology.  You deserve so much better my friend!!  Please forgive me, a sinner who has hurt the friend that means the most to him.

Your brother in Christ,

Jason