Fathers Day 2023

(photo: "Daughter take Heart" by Amy Huzil)

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It's been a long while.

Rather than starting this post off by writing about how I've not written here for years, we'll skip that because we know it's true. 

I'd like to think of this blog as conversing with an old friend. The kind that you can not speak to for many years, and then meet for coffee and pick up where you left off and it's like no time has passed.

Yea. Like that. =)

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So, today is Fathers' Day. Always a day that no matter where I am in my journey here on this terrestrial ball, will carry with it emotions that are bigger than my heart can handle at times.

Last year (around this time of year actually) I received a text from my dad, whom I had not heard from in years. This step alone marked me, but he has a habit of falling in and out of my life in a very noncommittal way, so also I was not expecting much.

In a strange way, I had felt like the Lord was urging me to just allow my dad to be "present" in his own way. Twelve years ago when he had first come into my life, what I had wanted, and expected of our relationship (which was not an unusual expectation in my opinion, but impossible for him) was unfulfilled in the deepest ways and caused much "adult" hurt, brokenness, and loss. It was a hard time and I had to learn how to let the Lord father me in new ways, and heal my daughter's heart.

Fast forward to this past year, and I have found myself allowing my dad into my life without expectation (harder than it seems). And consequentially mourning the loss of not having a dad, mourning the loss now of years of separation, and presently, mourning the loss of 45 years of not having a father.

I never had a father figure really. A string of moms boyfriends growing up with whom some I connected with and some I certainly didn't. I did have a wonderful Grandfather, and God has given me the gift of "Fathers" in my life, men who have mentored me, encouraged me and loved me, including an amazing and loving Father-in-law, all for which I am so thankful.

And the wound yet remains.

I think, as I reflect on this year, it's a year that I have gotten to know more about my dad than ever before, but also a year that I have found myself having to reconcile the loss of a dad that was not, and can never be what I desire him to be, and the unknowns of if I will ever, in fact, see his face in front of me. It's been a year of accepting the things I cannot change. It's been a year of unraveling and a year of reconciling. But the reconciliation remains in a way, even more painful because it is not truly fulfilled.

And all the while I will know that God is my Father and the verses that speak of Him being a Father to the Fatherless will ring true, and I will lament each Father's Day that it will forever be different for me. And I will rejoice with my friends who are celebrating good fathers, and I will stand with my brothers and sisters who carry the wounds of an absent father, and abusive father, a father who didn't fulfill what was needed.

It's just what it is. 

I have heard someone say that letting someone be the person they are without trying to change them or manipulate them into what you think they should be, is loving them.

So I love my Dad.

And the wound remains, but at least it's not bleeding anymore.