The Many Of Me

It was a long and painful night last night. I’m not sure I really slept at all, but my prayer last night gave me what I needed to at least go to bed and rest.

Today was Sabbath, and I was so thankful for the time of fellowship and worship surrounded with people who lift me in prayer and comfort me in trying times. As is true so many times, the specific passages were ones that spoke comfort, reassurance and guidance to my aching heart.

Before going to bed last night I sent a message to my daughter asking her to grab a private moment to call. I needed the perspective of someone who really knew my dad and me and my history with him. She called this afternoon in response to my message. I’m so glad I got her view. She said what I needed to hear. She encouraged me to remember (and to remind my therapists) that Dad has been living with a limited capacity to think clearly do to his age and pour oxygen intake. His responses to me in recent weeks needs to be viewed with that in mind. She also shared her perceptions of my dad and my relationship with him over the years. She sees him as having codependent relationships and very faulty faith beliefs, especially while I was growing up.

Writing this is taxing me more than I thought it would. I wanted to get it written down before I forget important parts of our conversation; but I’m so depleted that it’s hard to keep my hands on the keyboard and I keep making errors. I will simply have to come back and finish this later.

It’s very late – early if being technical; but I can’t think of sleeping. My heart is so very heavy, and my eyes are filled with tears. This is a horrible bind. On the one hand I can’t ignore the things that have lead to this place; yet everything within me screams that this can’t be right. Over the years we have clung to the Scripture that says, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” It has brought us a long way through very troubled waters that threatened to carry me away with the current. Always we have faced the hard and painful truth that God lead us to, trusting that He would keep His promises and see me safely through. I have felt great anguish at other points of revelation, so in that sense this isn’t new; but this…this next step is causing me to stumble. If I venture so far as to embrace this new revelation (if that really is what it is), then it opens a flood gate of horrendous possibilities. If I have been wrong about Dad’s love for me/us – if it was merely an illusion I created to survive like my therapist is suggesting, then have I also been wrong about Mom? “Don’t you dare ever say anything wrong about your mother.” my aunt said to me when she learned I was entering into therapy so many years ago. I so emphatically told her that would never happen. My mother was not a saint. She let me down at key moments, too; but that was the exception to the rule. Or was it? If the love that reassured me and gave me courage to press on in therapy was a figment of my imagination born out of a necessity to survive instead of reality, how do I go on from here. Do you get the drift? Am I just rambling on hoping some further enlightenment will bring me out of this horrid place? I know my parents are/were broken people in many ways; but I have always felt secure in the knowledge that they loved me. After all, we are all human and fail our loved ones from time to time. I cannot and will not hold my parents to a standard I fail to meet myself in my own parenting. How many times have I wondered whether or not a specific response to a parenting situation was the right thing – the most loving thing to do? Can I trust my own perception of my parenting any more than my perception of my parent’s parenting? Where does it all stop? I’m in a free fall and I don’t know if I will ever land. I want to say, “forgiven!!!”. I know that is the only place I can find resolution. That’s nothing new. I have struggled on for years dealing with anger about specific things my parents did that wounded me deeply; but always it was with the backdrop of a knowledge that they really loved me dearly. How…where… do I find peace to bring relief to my aching heart?
Dear God;
To You I run, though I stumble and fall; though the troubled waters threaten to sweep over me, You have been and still are my stay. You know the truth, whether this really is what I must accept in order to continue healing from the past. I place my utter and complete trust in You. Help me, I pray. Amen