TESTIMONY
I don't have many memories of my father being part of my family as a young child. The memories I have are in bits and pieces and more like snapshots. Pictures of him and my mom dancing in a living room with horrid orange 1980’s floral print couches. Images from a car ride on a trip down south. And many of the memories I have, the ones that stick out from the rest, are difficult.
When I was 10 my parents divorced. I went to 5th grade Camp when I came home he had left. My mom did a good job of trying to make it seem like everything was going to be okay. At first I remember a sense of relief as the environment of the household became less stressful.
The relationship I had with my dad disintegrated. I was left feeling his absence and the pain of the loss.
By high school, I remember feeling a great deal of anger toward my father. I did not feel like I was valuable to him. My self-worth suffered. There were times that I wished he were dead because I thought that if he had died it would have been easier. If he had died, I would know he would still have been with me if he could. It was avery painful rejection.
As a young adult, every so often I would try to reestablish a relationship but it was not healed. I remember the last conversation before my father’s heart attack, mostly because of what happened after. I was on my way to Mass. It was not a good conversation. As I hung up the phone, I had a deep feeling of sadness and I thought, “I will never speak to my father in this life again”. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, I had just given up hope for healing.
When I went into Mass, the Gospel reading was the story of the Prodigal Son. It didn’t help the situation any. Tears filled my eyes. It almost felt like God was pouring salt in my wound. And yet…there was something about the story I didn’t understand. I think God started revealing it to me that day, but it took years to really get it.
After that phone call, my relationship with my father remained broken for many years until one night, a call came that my father was in the hospital after a massive heart attack and wasn't expected to live through the night. For a moment I remember questioning whether or not to go and see him. Would it be better just to let everything lie as it was? Why reopen old wounds when I had come to peace with the situation? In the end, I went.
When I walked into the room I was shocked to see a man who looked more like my grandfather than my memory of my father. I stayed in the hospital for the next 3 or 4 days. I could tell you lots of stories of the grace that happened there including an amazing experience with the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick that suddenly, and unexplainably, turned my father's situation around so much that within 24 hours, he was conscious and able to talk again. When he awoke he was looking at me and I wasn’t sure he knew who I was. He tried to speak but we were not able to understand him. We brought him a pen and paper and he scratched three symbols: L, V, U. I felt shock… all those years I had felt unloved. That began my healing.
For the first time in two decades I said, I love you too, Dad.
Since then we've reestablished our relationship. He is a weekly guest in my home and has gotten to know his grandchildren. I really enjoy having him in my children's life and watching them get to have a relationship with him.
God brings things full circle in ways we can't possibly understand or expect. One day shortly after our reconciliation, I found my dad having a seizure on my living room floor. He is diabetic, like two of my daughters. I quickly assessed that he was having a crisis situation. The memory of my fifteen year old self, so hurt that I thought I wished him dead, flashed through my mind. I felt horror about what I had once felt. Of course I didn’t want to see him dead! I understood then that it had only beenthe confusion of a teenage girl’smisguided response to grief that had allowed me to feel that way. It was a lesson for me in the power of forgiveness to help us let go of past hurts. I could forgive him…and myself.
God has a sense of humor. I was the only one present at that crisis who possessed the knowledge, medication and training to save his life. God gave me the chance to redeem my previous thoughts. Something more was healed in me when I gave him his life back.
I never thought I’d be here with him, in the same room, growing our faith together. I love you, Dad.
This year I have gone through a series of personal traumas. I did a lot of self-reflection as I looked back at my life experiences. I discovered that those feelings of abandonment and rejection that I experienced with my earthly fatherhad slowly influenced my thoughts about God the Father. I was always a faithful Catholic and God did reach into my life in marvelous ways… but my overwhelming feeling about God in my young adult life was that he was always ready to reject me and leave me if I should ever step out of line and not do things exactly right. It wasn't a message that I consciously thought about. But for me, He became a figure waiting… always ready at my slightest mistake to judge me and condemn me. I can see now that I spent my young adult life trying to earn His love. That caused me a lot of stress, grief and pain. And worst of all, it hid from me the truth of who the Father really is.
There is asubtle difference between “God the Father” and “God our Father”. I thought back to that day at Mass when I heard the story of the Prodigal Son and realized why it had stung me so badly. It isimpossible to understand God Our Father until we realize something. And that one thing makes all the difference…
…The parableof the prodigalson is really about our prodigal Father.
And that makes all the difference in the world.
Let’s talk about that…