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?"
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