When I read the angry words of my departed older daughter, my heart at first sank into despair, than it opened to a world I'd never seen before, that was always right in front of me, but I was unable to see it.
[Note: I am continuing this post from a comment I entered on Joy Armstrong Photography blog . . .
http://joyarmstrongphotography.blogspot.com/2011/01/lahain-l.html?showComment=1318008765109#c7460315992041510120]
"Since 2003, when son Carl brought things left for me by departed family to my apartment, they sat buried amidst many other things kept here, wanting a place big enough to spread out for viewing, and reminiscing. Then, in September, 8 years later, Carl again helped to move them to a place large enough to view and sort family memories left from a past so painful it stings like a fresh wound.
Yesterday, October 6, reading through letters that flooded the mail system at the time of my family denouncing me as husband and father, I read one crucial letter written by Crystal. Her angry heart is frozen in time and eternity in the words she penned.
Of course, my heart wept for the daughter that means so much to me, yet her fear and hard-hearted disdain for me is a mighty barrier that stills grows larger, between us.
My mother tried her best to break that barrier, and open dialogue between my departed family and I, but, her prayers and goodwill made no impact, no change, no difference.
I too, gave up my trust in prayer and my hope for personal change, and returned to despair, which I imagine is just what my former family wanted, anyway.
But, as I read my precious daughter's angry words, and wept from my heart, a thought began to pervade my anguished mind. "What if I had been a gentle father, a father who needed less nurturing than the nurturing he gave to his wife and children?
That thought quickly overcame my grief. So, I began to search my memories for how I measured up as a husband and father who nurtured his family. Know what? I failed so miserably that it is a wonder that my sweet wife and our children did not leave me years before they did!
Yet, it is abiding Love which conquers family breakup, and our home did not have abiding Love. Now, considering my family, and comparing our home to others where abiding Love held families together through far worse than our family experienced, the awesome abiding Love of my mother shines more brightly than ever!
Somewhere it is written that "Love covers a multitude of wrong." I always wondered at this seeming contradiction of emotional conditions. But, now, it makes perfect sense. Real Love cannot die! It just goes on and on and on! Even more a miracle, True Love never quits its efforts to reconcile, restore relationships, and create better and more meaningful marriage, family relations, and even deeper love for all!
My family has never, ever experienced True Love. My mother did, and now I know that it is true of her that she was a praying wife, and mother. Her abiding Love still lives today.
My question is, "Will mother's abiding Love bring myself and my family back together?"
To be honest, I don't think so. Too many years with too much hard-hearted mindset has formed hard-lined separation in the hearts of the one who vowed with me to a lifetime of marriage, no matter how difficult, but when the chips went down departure seemed better than vows, and the children of our love also went away.
But! Abiding Love still lives!
Recently I discovered a man who is married to a woman with abiding Love. She and he had 27 years of pure Hell as a couple before he woke up to understand his role as husband, father, and nurturer. His wife told him, when he wanted Divorce, "Over my dead body!" Her abiding Love not only saved her family the evils of Divorce, but it led her family into a world of hope and new beginnings every day, as her husband was given unlimited time to change.
Now, he is so enthused at her abiding Love that he uses her undying faith in him and their marriage vow to share with everyone how to gain and grow abiding Love!
http://youcansavethismarriage.com/blog/unhappy-marriage/ "
[Cont'd]
With this kind man's videos and encouraging words, I have renewed my faith in mother's abiding Love, and in her prayers for healing in my departed family, and our reconciliation before Death overtakes our home.
Reading my daughter's hurting, harsh, angry letter made me cringe, but it also opened my heart to something I never before understood; A nurturing father.
In all my life, going back all the way to my infancy, I somehow never discovered that I have the ability and means to give strength and nurturing to others. I'm sure that my daughter and my other children felt that I sometimes nurtured them, but I can assure them that those were not intentional desires of my heart to nurture. Oh, I wanted so very much to have a wife and home of eternal love, and respect for mother and father, and for our children, but, I had no idea HOW to make this so.
All too late, now, I have found that missing link - nurturing. For all my memories over my life, I can think of no place where I purposefully nurtured anyone! What a horrible, horrible thing this is!
Yet, despite my awesome, sweetheart of a wife to birth and mother my children, and to love me beyond human endurance, yet suffer her human limits of endurance and ultimately Divorce me, and beautiful children rarely found in any home, I never once realized the desperate need my wife and children had, and still have, for me to give each unconditional nurture! How could I have missed this absolutely crucial element of Love?
But, I now face the fact, I did miss this opportunity to establish a most wonderful family and home for my children, thteir children, and all following children. Oh! My heart grieves!
Where does a forsaken father start to offer his departed loved ones nurturing? It should have started in my heart long years before I met my children's mother, so that's where, I belive, it should now begin.
Another crucial element I missed is the husband affirming his wife. I cannot recall a single instance where I purposefully affirmed either the mother of my children, or my second wife! How horrible is that?!!
Both nurturing and affirming require active, continuing planning, thinking, searching, and developing an attitude and a life-set of mental conditioning to make a husband's wife the woman and wife she is meant to be. I failed so miserably that not only did I lose my darling wife, but she still fights with a sense of inadequacy.
Well, that's now gonna end! From the moment I discovered this to my last breath, my heart is condemned if I do not daily affirm my awesome, but departed children's mom! Honey, hold me to the flame on this one! Honestly, I'd rather die rather than miss another moment to affirm and love you, even from the world I now live in, in your Divorce. Forgive my sin against you, if you can ever dare to do so, but even if not, every day I will affirm you, in thought, word, and prayer.
Actually, it is a pleasure to hurt this way, and to have the chance now, to love you this way.
In fact, I want the entire world to understand that each of my precious children deserve their father's undying devotion to their well-being, and his daily nurturing. Kids, you have my heart, now, so open the doors wide to get all you have missed from living with your dad. It's too late for so much education that you needed for your own successful relationships, but, for whatever reason it is so late, it is now yours for the taking.
Please, pray for me, that this burden for you will never leave me, and grow me into a dad you can feel a little bit good about having, not for me, but to relieve your own burden of shame and grief for my being your dad.
Love . . . .
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