Father Thoughts

Lately I have been playing this song over and over again:


I keep having trouble being able to accept that I am loved by God.
As a father-figure.
As MY FATHER.


I dont remember much of my very young childhood, but I do remember this one secret name thing my dad and I had for eachother that we made up on our one furlough out west. He liked it a lot and I liked the rhyming aspect of it. I was his little girl.

As I grew up, somehow we lost that. I remember being concerned about something and asking him if I could talk to him about it. He had an errand to run that was a 30-minute motorcycle-trip away and so he let me ride behind him and try to ask about it.
It was something I had overheard my mother saying to someone else about "how much time" he spent at home versus away doing "ministry." I was shocked when I first heard that, but I watched and realized it was true. I hardly ever saw my Daddy.

I tried to tell him it in my 10-year-old knowledge of emotional distance, but I remember him turning it into a debate. He challenged me to make a graph of the time he was "at home" and the time he was away. I remember dutifully keeping that list for a week before I threw it away. #1 problem was that he was right. He was "at home" much more often than he was gone. #2 problem was that the graph was messy. #3 problem was that I didn't want to talk about it all of the sudden.

I realize now that I am older that although he was physically "at home" all the hours he was sleeping or eating, or doing something ELSE and not with us is what I should have been counting. Because even after all that I had to force (or ask ahead) to get him to myself.


I remember a couple months ago, an old family friend telling me that my father loved me. I bust into tears and shook my head. No, I remember with perfect clarity the last time I KNEW my daddy loved me.


It was September. I may have been 11 or twelve, I don't remember exactly the year.
We had just had a fellowship at our house, and it was a bummer night for me. I had wanted a couple things to play out and stuff had gone wrong. I especially wanted to talk with a certain boy and he had ignored me the whole night.
I sat down on the couch dejected and upset about life in general not going the way I would have liked.
Somehow Daddy was walking by, and instead of doing any of the number of things he might have had to do; he sat down beside me, and put his arm around my shoulder, and asked me how I was and how things were going.
I remember that something inside broke and I turned towards him, hugged him and cried on his shoulder. In public, in the middle of our living room.
I remember that the boy I wanted to talk to walked off and I didnt care that he left for the night. I dont think I ever SAID anything, or that Daddy said anything else. But I remember crying and hugging him and him hugging me and knowing that he loved me and that it was ok.



Since then.... I dont know. I know that a lot of times he did not love me. Or the family. That we were not his first priority. And it still hurts me to this day.
Talking about it today triggered all these memories I think. Right now all I want to do is have him see how hard I am crying and to ask him WHY.


I remember not too many months ago when I had to ask him for permission to use the phone. He pressed me for all the details and what exactly I was going to say and why I needed it and why I needed it at that time. After a couple minutes of this he said that I needed to wait until he got home so we could talk about it.... more.
I have never been so exasperated!  I remember being so angry that my hands shook so badly that I dropped the phone and I could not really control myself.  Mother thought I had "thrown" the phone and she was mad at me for that.  She said I was "throwing a temper tantrum" because he did not just give me what I wanted right away.  I screamed incoherently something about "that is not true" and started crying.  She said it was so true and too look at myself.  I was throwing a huge pity party.
I remember not being able to see clearly and almost screaming at her: "He calls THIS love?  He SAYS HE LOVES ME?!?!"
I dont remember what she said.  I remember pushing past shocked and frozen little siblings (who heard me screaming and came running) to hid in my room the rest of the day. (I was grounded anyway, so I was technically just returning to my cell)

I'm not sure how all this interprets, but maybe its the trust issues that we children all have are cropping up for me this past week.  Any serious relationship I have has been hampered by them.  And right now I cant sleep, tormented by the question "Why?" and the tears that only flow as long as the heart grieves.