I posted this a few years ago. I thought to post it again. I hope it helps someone.
-------------
"Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His
Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! [the Aramaic word for Daddy] Father!"
(Galatians 4:6)
"Sing to God, sing praises to His name; Lift up a song for
Him . . . whose name is the LORD, and exult before Him. A father of the
fatherless and a judge for the widows is God in His holy habitation. God makes
a home for the lonely . . . . " (Psalm 68:4-6)
I call Him Lord so often I sometimes forget He’s my heavenly
Daddy. I’m sorry when that happens. ‘Lord’ conjures for me a more distant
relationship than the intimate bond ‘Daddy’ invokes.
In prayer several years ago, that intimacy stirred thoughts once
again of my earthly father. Those who’ve followed my blogs for a while know
Albert left me and my sister in 1954. I was four, Andrea was not yet two. He
wouldn’t keep out of other women’s beds, so Mom finally told him to pack his
valise.
Andrea and I rarely saw him afterward. Three, maybe four times
over the next decade and a half. Then, in 1968, when I was eighteen, I asked
Mom to set a meeting with him at my paternal grandparents’ apartment. I wanted
to know his side of the story. I wanted to know why he left me and Andrea.
My mind’s eye still sees him as he sat in the wing-backed chair
in front of the living room window. I sat cross-legged on the carpet a few feet
from him. Andrea and Mom sat on the sofa to my left, my grandmother on the
flowered upholstered chair to the right of the couch. My grandfather softly
drummed his fingers on the dining room table to my right.
“Why did you leave?”
Albert hardly hesitated. He looked me in the eyes and said,
“Because I wanted to.”
That was 50 years ago.
Fifty.
His words remain as chilling as if he spoke them last month.
I don’t know why that memory resurfaced while I was in prayer a
few years ago. I'd forgiven Albert in my early years as a Christian for what
he’d done to me. But that morning the Lord interrupted my prayer time and asked
if I would again forgive Albert. His question caught me by surprise, and I
wasn’t quite sure how to respond. Would I again forgive Al for casting me aside
like a piece of trash? More to the point, 'could' I forgive him?
“I’d like to,” I finally answered.
What happened next still warms me to think of it. The memory of
Albert saying what he did remained – and yet remains to this day in 2019 –
chiseled in my mind, but the memory then took a sudden and extraordinary turn.
I was no longer sitting on the carpet. Instead, my heavenly
Daddy was sitting on the carpet and I was sitting in His lap. His arms
encircled me and I snuggled deep into His embrace. His warmth surrounded me. I
could hear His heart beat, feel His breath on my hair. A great sense of quiet
washed over me. I knew I was at home, at home in His arms.
Home. Oh, the security, serenity, the love and hope that word
arouses within me.
Albert’s words, “Because I wanted to” no longer stung as they
had in 1968 because now, as I sat in quiet prayer, I could snuggle deeper into
Daddy’s embrace.
Albert’s cruelty dissipated like a mist burned away by the sun
as my Daddy held me yet closer – because He understood how those words ripped a
hole in me. I remember even now as I write this how – as this scene unfolded in
my memory – I broke into a grin, looked him in the eyes and said without
hesitation: “I forgive you.”
Why shouldn’t I forgive the man? How could I not forgive the
man? I was sitting in my real Daddy’s lap. Albert was never my father. He only
impregnated my mother. He was no more my father than if he had raped her and
she conceived. But my Daddy in heaven – oh, my Daddy has never left me, no
matter how many reasons I gave Him in my life to do so. And even when I didn’t
know it He was there, all the time, His arm around my shoulder, whispering
encouragement to a young boy, who became a teenager, and then became a young
man who would one day become the man at 69 who joyfully lifts his hands in
worship of his Daddy in heaven.
Sitting in my heavenly Father’s arms, how could Albert’s cavalier
rejection hurt me? I could feel only pity for the man who missed a lifetime of
opportunities to be my earthly daddy.
Oh, I am so in love with my Daddy who art in heaven.
No comments:
Post a Comment