With the divorce, I really pulled the ostrich with her head in the sand routine. I did not call my mother for several months. I kept in touch via email, but I basically did not want to get involved. I used the 2,000 miles between us and my dislike of talking on the phone as excuses to be absent from the situation. The funny thing is I thought I was being so adult by giving them their space and letting the dust settle before resuming normal contact. It took my loving husband and brother telling me that I was avoiding the issues to help me realize that what I was doing was emotionally unhealthy for all of us. I allowed my siblings to take the brunt of the hit since they lived in the area and I didn’t. I wasn’t there for them, and I certainly didn’t show love to my parents throughout the whole process.
Out of the blue today, I received some amazing encouragement in this journey. Our awesome pastor spoke on forgiveness this morning. Something he said really struck home. Rough paraphrase: he said that many times forgiveness is what is standing in the way of our physical healing and our walk with God. I can’t say that I haven’t felt close to God this year, but it seemed like a struggle to grow closer to him. I don’t want to just maintain my current relationship with God. I want this relationship to be ever deepening, growing, and changing my life. Just maintaining is mediocrity, complacency, settling for less than the best of what God has for me. I refuse to remain stagnant and I love that God spoke directly into that desire today. What an awesome way to show the depth of His unfathomable love for me!
As I begin to walk out this journey of forgiveness, I have decided to make a daily pronunciation of forgiveness for my father. Another thing our pastor said today was that you know you have forgiven someone when you can pray blessings over them. I know that I am not there yet so I definitely need to continue to daily forgive him and place the entire situation in God’s hands. As I forgive him, I also need to put effort into building a relationship with him. This may be more difficult than the forgiveness as I’m not sure what that is going to look like. Once again, God is going to have to be in control of this situation. If He knows my thoughts from afar, if He formed me in my mother’s womb, if He has even numbered the hairs on my head, than He certainly cares about me enough to help me build this relationship. After all, He is my perfect father!
In developing a relationship with my father, I am receiving help from an unexpected source; my father. Amazingly, he has begun to call me on a monthly basis after years of almost no contact. Yes, the conversations are awkward and short. Yes, we talk about cars, his dog and his motorcycle club. If those subjects are going to be the foundations of our relationship, than so be it. I have hope for more, though.
Rock of Sages 