Dr Bob Odom
June 2026
In a few weeks, I will turn 70 years old. As I reflect on the journey God has given me, I find myself thinking about the lessons I have learned along the way. Over the next few articles, I would like to share some of those lessons and the stories behind them.
As I look at my life, I realize that I have been blessed beyond words. I also know that my life could have easily taken a very different path.
My story began before I was even born. My parents divorced, and my mother left to find herself. As a result, I was dropped off at my grandmother’s house. When I was six years old, my mother remarried and wanted me to come live with her.
For a while, things seemed fine. But my stepfather struggled with issues that would eventually affect our entire family. When he was sober, he could be one of the kindest men you would ever meet. When he drank, however, he became abusive—emotionally, mentally, and physically.
His discipline was often excessive and cruel. One punishment required me, at seven or eight years old, to stand facing a wall on one foot. If my raised foot touched the ground, he would slap me and restart the clock. This would continue for long periods while my mother pleaded with him and arguments erupted around me.
On another occasion, he wanted to see what would happen if he drove nails through a paddle-ball board and used it to strike someone. I became the test subject. He made me remove my pants and hit me repeatedly. I could barely sit down for days afterward.
While my stepfather was abusive, my mother became overprotective. She rarely allowed me to have friends over, and I was never permitted to visit other children’s homes. She feared that people would discover what was happening inside our house.
Because my stepfather spent much of his money on alcohol, my mother had to work. Long before the term existed, I became a latchkey kid. In the mornings, I often had Carnation Instant Breakfast before heading to school. In the evenings, I came home to a TV dinner that I heated myself. I completed my homework and hoped my stepfather would not come home. If he did, I retreated to my room. Books became my refuge. I loved to read and often lost myself in stories that took me far away from the realities of home.
Why share these memories? Over the years I came to understand that my stepfather was fighting demons he could never overcome. That understanding does not excuse his actions, but it does help explain them. Eventually, he traveled to Montana and rented a cabin. A week later he was found there, surrounded by empty vodka bottles, having taken his own life with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The demons won.
By that time, I had not seen him in fifteen years. I had moved to New York, married, and started a family of my own. Yet something significant had already begun to happen in my heart. Before I received news of his death, I had started the difficult process of forgiveness.
I realized that if I wanted to grow and heal, I needed to forgive—not only my stepfather, but also my mother. Forgiveness was not easy, nor did it happen overnight. But I knew that if I continued carrying the pain and anger, I would spend the rest of my life reacting to my past instead of living in the present.
As I learned to forgive, I felt the weight of those old wounds begin to lift. My heart found peace. When I heard that my stepfather had died, I expected to feel relief. Instead, I felt sadness. One of my greatest disappointments was knowing that I would never have the opportunity to tell him personally that I forgave him.
Years later, however, God provided an unexpected gift. After reconnecting with my mother, I visited Texas and spent time with one of my stepbrothers. During our conversation, he shared something that deeply moved me. He told me that my stepfather had said that if he ever saw me again, he wanted him to tell me he was sorry for everything he had done. Those words did not erase the past, but they brought a measure of healing and closure I never expected to receive.
One of the greatest lessons I have learned in seventy years is the power of forgiveness. We forgive because we need healing. We forgive because it allows us to move forward. We forgive because it frees our hearts to love and our minds to be transformed.
Someone once said that refusing to forgive is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. They don’t. We are the ones who suffer.
Forgiveness does not mean forgetting. It does not excuse wrongdoing. It does not erase consequences. What it does is release the hold that another person’s actions have on our lives. When we forgive, we stop allowing the person who hurt us to control our future. We release them, and in doing so, we release ourselves.
Is forgiveness easy? Not at all. It is one of the hardest choices we will ever make. Yet it is also one of the most freeing. Forgiveness has the power to save us from being prisoners of our past and opens the door to a healthier future. As I look back on seventy years of life, I can say without hesitation that forgiveness changed mine.
To be continued:
Life on the edge 