‘Love Is Blind’ star shares how God helped him forgive his mom
Zack Goytowski, a season 4 cast member of the dating show “Love Is Blind,” shared details about his difficult upbringing on Instagram and said learning about Jesus helped him forgive his mother shortly before her death.
“We all can be someone’s hope in the hopelessness,” the reality star wrote in the caption of his carousel post.
Goytowski's text slideshow began with his life circumstances when he was in high school, coping with a mother suffering from mental illness and drug addiction.
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“My senior year in high school, I was filled with anger and rage. My mother’s mental illness and addiction were out of control,” he revealed.
Goytowski said he often wanted to avoid going home after school because he didn't know in what state he'd find the house. Sometimes he'd enter his bedroom only to find his mother had smashed the walls in with a hammer, or the house would be in shambles with clothes strewn all over when his mother was in a manic rage.
“There was no stability. Every time I made a friend, I’d have to move on and say goodbye,” he wrote, recalling the many times they moved to different houses and he and his sister had to change schools.
But during his senior year, a friend invited him to her Christian youth group, and it was there that he gained a sense of community and learned the power of forgiveness through Jesus’ example. He learned “about a man who sacrificed everything so that others could be forgiven.”
During his junior years in college, Goytowski said his mother had lost custody of his sister and had been committed to mental institutions several times.
Nearly six months had passed before he saw her again.
When he began volunteering at a homeless shelter and heard the stories of people who had hit rock bottom, he realized his mother’s flaky behavior and repeated refusal to see him were most likely because she was ashamed to tell him she was homeless.
He recounted saying a prayer and asking God to help him see his mother. Then, he looked down at his phone and noticed she had called. Although she attempted to cancel their meeting at the last minute, telling him she was too ill to see him, he insisted and she relented.
“When I saw her, her face was gaunt. She looked like she hadn’t eaten or slept in weeks. I sat down with my mother that day. I hugged her, and I told her I forgave her for everything. She had still not forgiven herself,” he said.
“She was living at the time in a storage unit, using a space heater at night to keep warm,” Goytowski continued. “She was at rock bottom, and she didn’t want me to know. I prayed with her that day. I prayed that she would overcome her addiction. I prayed she would be able to overcome her mental illness. And I told her how much I loved her. And it was after that day that everything changed.”
God had heard his prayers and his mother changed her life. She stopped using drugs, her medications stabilized, and she spent the next few years of her life serving others who struggled with mental illness. Goytowski and his younger sister finally celebrated a few happy Christmas’ with their mom.
“They are moments that I never would have gotten if I held onto the pain of the past and chosen not to forgive. Grace isn’t fair. But if we choose to give it every day, we make the world a better place for everyone,” Goytowski added.
“When I was going through my mother’s things after she died, I found a small note. It was dated shortly after the day I sat down with her in that small town in the middle of nowhere. It said, ‘Somehow, she began to see a little hope in her hopelessness.’ We all can be someone’s hope in the hopelessness,” he concluded.
Goytowski found his true love on the dating show “Love Is Blind” and is now happily married. At their wedding, the couple danced to “I Hope You Dance” by Lee Ann Womack, the song his mother dedicated to him after a night of chaos, but it stuck with him forever.
Jeannie Ortega Law is a reporter for The Christian Post. Reach her at: [email protected] She's also the author of the book, What Is Happening to Me? How to Defeat Your Unseen Enemy Follow her on Twitter: @jlawcp Facebook: JeannieOMusic
