Where It All Began

Some 60 odd years ago I came into this world.  I was the first born to parents who were madly in love with each other.  My mother was (and is) a little bit of nothing with a will of iron and my father was a gentle man who was passionate about his family.  I was born one week before my father's birthday and for all his life he said I was his best birthday present.  I didn't realize what a wonderful blessing that was for me until I got to be much older than I should have been because I've always been a little slow on the uptake.  I got to grow up in a house where two people were in love with each other, which is almost unheard of any more.  

My dad wasn't a talker, but every year for our birthday he wrote us a letter telling us what we meant to him. For many years, beginning with my early teens,  I took every letter as a comment on how I wasn't living up to his expectations.  They broke my heart and I could not understand why I was never good enough.  That was mostly because my father was not the kind of man who could tell me he was proud of me.  Instead he called me (and my sibs) "knucklehead," and his advice included "Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back."  I was not able to read his heart, so I took everything he said to heart.  And the heart that I nurtured was afraid and unsure.  I don't know why this was so, I only know that I believed that I was invalid in some sense and couldn't figure out how to make "me" right.

Many years later, during a very rough time for me in my marriage, my dad's letter to me was about how proud he was of me for creating the family I had made.  Did he know that I was on the verge of divorce?  That my husband and I hadn't managed to have a decent conversation in years and that I felt lost and alone and scared about the future? I was worried about my kids and the choices they were making.  I was only able to see that I still wasn't living up to his expectations and that only approval I got was when I pretended that everything was alright.  I got rid of that letter and all of the letters I had kept for so many years because i was tired of being a fraud.

Somehow, through grace, my husband and I found our way back to each other.  My dad aged, got sicker and finally died.  And now I wish I had kept those letters because I know he loved me and I just couldn't see it.  So today's gratitude is for all the love that was there for the taking, if only I could have gotten out of my own way to see it.  Fortunately, today I realize just how blessed I was by my father's love.