The Wound is Real

It seems fitting for me to be upset with my mother today.  Out of anger, hurt, embarrassment and any of the myriad reasons possible, she opened the wound again.  In a cunning tone of voice she so proudly expressed that she can trust my father will not leak her secrets to me, that she's not a child and doesn't need me butting into her life on everything.  The man she despised all my life for being a deadbeat dad is a confidant and I'm the intruder.

My dad has never been a part of my life much.  I try to act like it doesn't hurt and most days I don't even think about it.  My life is typical without him in it.  It's hurtful that she's palling around with him when he hasn't reached out to me in years.  As a mother, shouldn't she stand up for me; take a stand and deem it unacceptable to carry on with him while he wants nothing to do with his daughter?

I talk with my aunt and we agree that he's just a loner and he doesn't really connect with anyone and how everyone just accepts him for who he is.  I hold no ill will against him and have mostly accepted the reality that he'll, aside from a miraculous conversion of heart, always be distant or completely absent.  That still leaves me unsettled, no comfort will come from that realization.  What about justice?

There are so many questions that will go forever unanswered.  Maybe I don't want to hear the answers.  I wonder though, why didn't he want me?  It leaves big wounds when you're not wanted by your parent.  It hurts to think about all the ways, big and small, my life could've been different had I had a father who loved me.

In all my human frailness, I falter every day and see how that hole is raw and deep.  I see it most often in my oversensitivity to small things of personal matters.  I sometimes make a mountain out of a molehill just so I can try to make another, namely my husband and children, see that I am important.  I don't consciously do this, it's more of an, "oops, there I went again on my soap box" moment.  I'm hurt and I want everyone to understand how badly.

It's especially hard with teenagers.  I feel the rejection and pushing away which is completely natural of course, but still painful in the sense that I feel betrayed.  At times, I understand the desire to have a baby out of the need to be loved.  I can get that.  I just want to be someone's everything.  I want to feel the unconditional love of a father.

So, I reach out to you Lord.  I want to understand this love you have for me but I have not even the slightest figment of memory to draw on as an example.  My dad never loved me.  He never hugged me.  He never held my hand.  He never looked at me and said I was his little girl.  He only said that I was a mistake and that he and my mom did a good thing by letting me come into the world.  After that, his job was done, I guess.  Help me, Father.  Help me to know how great your love is.  How eternal and vast your embrace is.  How I can rest my head on you and you will bring comfort in my times of sorrow.  Help me know that I am loved beyond compare.  That I am beautiful in your eyes.  That I am your everything.  Can you help me to believe it?

So Loved

I couldn't stop the tears from coming.  

forcing their way through the labyrinth in my heart, 

surging through, 

up and over every wall, 

exiting the portal of my soul. 

The eyes don't lie. 

It was unstoppable.  

Freedom and life is what followed 

after the walls opened and released the 

fear...

hatred... 

worry... 

anger... 

condemnation... 

that I had put on myself.  

I AM LOVED!  

Always!  

By our everlasting God.  

Like music to my ears, 

the music rumbled through my veins.

For all the children and adults who don't know their fathers or have little or no contact with their dads.  i am a firm believer that you always have the desire to love and be loved by your father.  Regardless of how little you know about him.  

Let it be known that you are loved.  You have a father.  An almighty God, everlasting, eternal, merciful, loving, forgiving father.  He is your creator.  He is the potter, we are the clay.  We are His masterpiece.  Every hair on our bodies, He loves.  He will never turn his back on you.  For when you call His name he is yours.  

When I finally realized this at 33 years of age.  I couldn't help but be overwhelmed by the feeling of belonging to someone.  For the first time in my life I felt wanted.  Not in the romantic or sexual way.  Like a father loves his daughter.  My existence was validated.  I was loved by the Father.  However absent my own biological father had been throughout my life, the sorrow and emptiness was lifted at that moment when I realized that I had a father all along.  This father loved me with his whole heart, despite all my short-comings.  And all he asks is that I love him in return.  

I was reading my parish magazine and noticed a quote from a teenage girl who had discovered this very same truth while on a Steubenville youth retreat.  I was elated that she was given this beautiful gift and the grace to receive it at such a young age.  What a blessing it might have been to have had this revelation earlier in my life.  i've become comfortable with the fact that God's timing is not my time.  He knows what he's doing so I trust that he revealed this gift to me when I was ready to receive it.

We are made for more.  The troubles of this life, the pain, the suffering, the feelings of neglect will never surpass the joy and love the Father has for his children.  We are the apple of his eye:)