I just hung up the phone a bit ago from a patient who sounded just like my father. He sounded country, overly loud and a bit in a rush to get off the phone. I'm not sure if it's b/c it's literally just days past the one year anniversary of when we found my Pops overdosed from drugs (July 1, 2011), or just the uncanny ability for a person's voice to illicit so many memories; but either way, I welcomed the onslaught of memories it brought. I'm crying as I'm typing this. I miss my Pops. I really, really do. He had a hard, hard life. Without the Godly love of my Mother, and a heavenly father who loves me so, I'm not too sure where I'd be right now in life either. Life can change at the drop of a hat; circumstances change; people change; love changes; feelings wane; people are fickle; priorities are reassessed…and yet God remains the ONLY constant. So much in life isn't fair but we do get to choose how we respond to a God that is sovereign-He knows all, sees ALL, and is over all things despite the chaos that ensues.
I haven't even journaled about the death of my father, or any of the events leading up to his death, nor captured any thoughts after my short stent at counseling from dealing with resolving some bitterness issues. I just recently captured his last few voicemails off my old Iphone (that I dropped in water and yet God miraculously saved the phone enough for me to pull off those messages and re-record them on my new iphone). Is this my new normal?Will every July I get weepy and reflect on my father's death? I have this urgency to journal all that I can remember but need to get myself into a "safe place", some open space, some time off from work and get some solitude. It won't be pretty, I'm sure. I just keep thinking of one of my favorite quotes from my fave book, Kite Runner, " …but time can be a greedy thing–sometimes it steals all the details for itself". I WANT TO REMEMBER MY FATHER. THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY,
Honestly, I'm not sure what my new normal is. I want a father dearly in my life right now. Always have. But as I heard Dr Drew (on Celebrity Rehab) so soberingly quote once, "You don't get that….". So I too, I don't get a father right now in my life. Kinda weird when someone states the obvious but you've never heard the words spoken out loud. FEELS LIKE IT CHANGES THE COSMOS.
But this is my point: something in me this past week has shifted. I LOVE SHIFTS. I welcome shifts and changes in my life nowawadays like a cool breeze on a scorching summer day. I want to be stretched. I have been reading the blogs of other World Racer's and I'm not sure if it's some type of common lingo used by Racer's after completing training camp, but I've noticed many of them refer to God as "Daddy".
Whoa.
That just feels weird.
Daddy.
Abba, Father….something about that word Daddy just stings. It hits home.
For me, Daddy hasn't been a warm, fuzzy word for most of life. It's always brought with it such a great deal of anguish. So I decided to try something new. I decided I was going to pray to the Lord saying "Daddy" from now on.
Wowwwwww.
So much shifts everytime I say it. I have never seen my father as a man I could trust, as a man I could easily communicate my feelings with (even though I so badly tried!). He was a hard man to get close to…always kept me at an arm's length. And it's easy to be a different person when no one really knows who you are.
So, I've been praying to the Lord using the term Daddy and it makes me tear up…every time. For the past couple of years, I have been dealing with trusting in the Lord's goodness–and now I partly know why; it's b/c I was seeing the Lord, in part, in how I viewed my earthly father. Was the Lord really out for my best interest? Did he REALLY love me? Would he abandon me too?? COULD HE BE TRUSTED?? I am certainly open with the fact that I struggle with doubts. I pray that the Lord increases my faith. Increase my faith, Lord…INCREASE MY FAITH, PLEASE! I pray that the Lord stretches me (and even in typing that I cringe thinking that he might give me some terminal type of cancer and take my life away!). This Christian life–it's all or none. You're either all in or not. You're either trusting in Him or not. I pray that as I begin to pray to my heavenly father and call out to him as "Daddy", that things in me keep shifting. It's the power of the holy spirit; it's Christ in me. It's the power of knowing your identity–who you are in Christ.
So this is my charge to you: "Deal with your wounds responsibly." For Father's day at my church recently, we had a guy named Shea Sumlin preaching about how we deal with our wounds, specifically, how do you deal with your "Daddy wounds"? (The sermon opened up with a beautiful video clip of Shea as a child trying to wish his father a happy father's day.) He challenged us to deal with our Daddy wounds repsonsibly; to not go and deal with our Daddy wounds by filling our need for intimacy with men, sex, alcohol, food, (*insert your vice here). DEAL WITH YOUR WOUNDS RESPONSIBLY.
Here is the sermon. It was life changing for me. Take a listen. It could be the same for you.
http://www.thevillagechurch.net/resources/sermons/
(It's titled, The Daddy Wound, by Shea Shumlin, June 10, 2012)
