Cancer of the Heart-Update from "Dear Dad"

So eight months ago I posted a blog entitled "Dear Dad...I'm sorry...How's it going?". I never posted a follow up...on purpose. You see just three short weeks later I received the first of three responses from him and his wife. Apparently his wife had opened the letter and read it while he was out of town and immediately sought me out on Facebook and sent a message. It was very sweet as she had embraced my letter and wanted to immediately connect via phone and get on with life so to speak. As much as I could find nothing wrong with her message I still became angry and irritated at such a response. I dismissed it and pretended I didn't receive it. Then a week later another message....this time with their phone numbers again pleaded to connect. I again laughed and scoffed..."psst...whatever". Then the letter came, in my dad's handwriting no less. It was written with excitement and nervousness as he anxiously awaited my contact. He even sent pictures of my two little siblings (who are my kids age....sigh) and discussed how things were going in his life and so forth. The sentence that stuck out the most to me though was this.."now we can be a family again!" Uh what? Did he just say "a family?" What a joke. I was so angry and disgusted I completely dismissed everything he said and filed it away-case closed. But....it wasn't closed. This was not what God had wanted me to do. You see I had did what he said.....literally. Wrote half a page, stuck it in the mail and went running in the other direction. "See God, See!! I did it. Now let's get off the subject. It's done, let's move on". Over the last few months I have had arguments aloud with God...."Okay, Okay, I'll reply. Okay" only to make every excuse in the world not to pick up the pen and do it. After several failed attempts to get me to listen He decided to speak through my dreams (which he does often-I have notepads full). Two nights ago I dreamed I had cancer. There was a tumor in my chest behind my breast-right where my heart is. During my dream I was going from Doctor to Doctor to figure out if I had cancer or not. The time period was present but dinosaurs roamed (symbolizing the past) and after I had tests run at the first clinic weeks and weeks passed and I felt scared and anxious since I still had no results so I went to an oncologist with all my kids in tow. They ran tests and assured me before I left that there was no cancer and that I was fine. But by the time I got home the doctor's office had called back and there was a mistake, they had read me the wrong results and I did in fact of cancer of the chest (?-what they called it) -but that it was caught early. All throughout the dream I kept hearing "but we caught it early". Then at the end people came to my door to sell me half chested shirts and outfits. They were wanting me to accept this state of being and just remove it and move on. When I woke up I knew what God was telling me. I was allowing cancer to creep into my heart and that if I didn't "catch it early" it would kill me. That tender pliable heart would turn to stone and would destroy me from the inside out. The other catch was the people selling me the "half chested outfits". He informed me that the world would allow me this out-they would tell me it's okay not to respond and that I had done my part where my dad was concerned and to just remove that convicted part of the heart and move on. I was speechless. I knew I had to sit down and do it. It's so funny, it took me months to write a single sentence to him "Dear Dad..I'm sorry...How's it going"...but when I sat down today with a postured heart of repentance and correction I wrote 11 pages. 11PAGES!!! I will admit I didn't drop one tear writing them...until I read it aloud to my husband and then I found myself sobbing. Everything, all the cancer I had hidden in my heart towards him came out onto the pages and I was finally released from the darkness that had crept in me. I was so afraid to just "GO THERE" that I had become unresponsive to the tender nudges of His voice. If I am to take this next step in my life to do His work and His calling on me (working with lost and hurting children) how could anything take place if I couldn't address the lost and hurting child within myself? Whew. It wasn't pretty and I'm kinda an ugly crier but the tenderness the Lord filled me with and the warmth from His arms holding me tight as I wrote it will forever be in my mind. So as I finish this post who do you need to get right with? Has cancer creeped into your heart because you just didn't want to go there? I won't quote you the entire letter but I will include this little tidbit. Since I got such a huge response from the first posting I am humbly reminded of all the fatherless (earthly) daughters out there who may humbly need to make the first step. Posture your heart and forgive.

"I can't offer you a father/daughter relationship. I can't even pretend that a happy family will ever exist for us. That ship has sailed at least 12 years ago. At 29 years old, all I can offer you is friendship. I can conclude that I have never known you as a person and have never had a relationship with you. And with you missing 20 years of my life it is safe to say that you know nothing about me. I'm not ready for phone calls and certainly not visits but I am willing to write. I'm willing to forgive you and perhaps build a friendship via mail. This is my effort to try so that my kids can see that you can forgive and try at any age in life. I hope you can see my extended hand and meet my conditions with humility and responsibility for the decisions you have made throughout my life. I was a child who didn't ask to be brought into this world. I didn't ask for the circumstances my parents found themselves in. I didn't ask for war. I only asked for love and to be free from co-dependant expectations that were placed upon me from birth. I needed the people who were suppose to love me the most to do just that-love me. But here we are....at a crossroad of responsibility and action. I am willing to accept my part and ask forgiveness for my actions...my only question is are you?"

We are all on the same team......aren't we?

Social media.... sigh..the greatest and worst invention of our time. We now have the ability to sit on our couch in the comfort of our homes while catching up with 500+ friends lives all in about an hour. It's ingenious. But, it has also opened up a new kind of evil in the world. We now have the ability to spew out our negative thoughts, feelings, well just about anything to pretty much anyone we want to at any time of day. Marriages have ended, life long friendships destroyed, lives ruined, reputations crushed, people beaten, robbed, murdered and cyber bulling that is so bad people actually take their own life. It's madness.....all because of the 240 characters of What YOU were thinking. Crazy to think how words carry that much power. And as much as WE (Christians) want to believe it's everyone else, because we would never do such a thing because we only update Godly things....we do it too. The sad part is, we think so much of ourselves that we don't even realize we are doing it. We sit down at our computer, read something Sally Sunday wrote and think, "I'll show her" and spend 15 mins researching something clever to post and pretend it's just "coincidence" that it is in complete opposition to her status. Don't pretend you haven't....We have all done it, myself included. The sad part is that Sally Sunday usually was just sharing a revelation that she herself needed to hear. She felt God speak to her in her own weakness and thought.."This is too good, I need to share it with everyone!" and posted it with no further intention. But for some reason, Christians...WE....seem to think everyone is indirectly talking about US on Facebook. It's kinda funny actually. Because of our extreme insecurities with our roles in the kingdom and where we ultimately fit it in we scroll through our feed and have that moment of "They are directing that towards me!! I know it!!". So it begins....the Gentleman's War. Ever see paintings or drawings of the British Army? They were legendary with their ability to fight a war with music playing, their finest clothes on and all marching directly towards one another...firing away. Head held high in pride and as those around them were shot and killed yet they kept on marching. Madness...utter madness. Kinda like what we do. God forbid we deleted Sally Sunday, she's "our friend"...and we love her dearly and well that just wouldn't be the Christian thing to do! But we have to get our Gentlemen jab in there somewhere. We will shoot to kill, all while wearing our Sunday best because we feel it's the more civilized thing to do. It's one of those things where you step back and think..."Aren't we all on the same team??" Where did Christians draw the line with one another and say.."Um, you may love Jesus and all but I don't agree with your thoughts on where we should put that foyer table so I'll pretend to be nice to you at Church but I wont approve your friend request. This is what the western church has come to.....division amongst ourselves! we are all believers, all recognized as crap outside of Jesus, all in need of a savior yet we can't even associate ourselves as friends on a website?! My God, how are some of these people going to handle an eternity with Sally Sunday and her bad furniture taste? LOL! And we wonder how abortion, child trafficking, homelessness, orphans, war...disease famine have all gotten WAY out of control is because the enemy has us all distracted wining at each other! If we would all just SNAP OUT OF IT and stand together we could claim the victory that is already ours!!! The only greatest church in the world I am aware of...IS US. We are the greatest church in the world!!! Not that one building in that one small town in that one state in that one country. The greatest church in the world has no walls, needs no passport, has no skin color requirement and has no political affiliation. It is EVERY BELIEVER on the face of THIS PLANET. Period. And until we all realize that, all look each other in the eye and say "Will you fight this WITH me"...20,000 people will die of hunger today, 890,000 will die due to contaminated water, 2.5 billion will have no access to clean drinking water, 124,000 abortions will take place and so forth and so on. Only when we unite together will anything ever change. Until then we will all be pointing fingers at one another...demanding justification for why they aren't doing what we are passionate about. All while Jesus looks on and thinks "If they would only humble themselves, unite together for my cause...things could be different". I want to be different, do you?