i have never met my father.
that is quite a powerful sentence.
in my life, this is a reality. something that i have grown more and more accustomed to over the years. and through a barrage of questioning by friends early on in life . . . questions that i didnt know the answers to . . . questions like, "Does it bother you to not know your dad?", "Do you get jealous when you see girls with their dads?", "What do you do on Father's day?", "Do you miss your dad?", "Do you love your dad?", "Would you ever want to meet your dad?"- i learned how to avoid the issue all together.
i grew up observing. observing other girls getting dropped off and picked up by their fathers from day care; observing friends pick out fathers day cards for the World's Best Dad; observing fathers proudly holding up their daughters after an elementary school choir performance; observing my sister playing around with her dad.
i would observe these things and never discuss them. i learned from an early age that the heart can hold copious amounts of pain, and interestingly enough, be able to hide it.
as i grew towards adolescence i dabbled in the give and takes that are the immature friendships of junior high- "i'll give you a little of my story- you'll take a little of my trust . . ." i remember a few rare occasions of sharing my secret with close friends- and then being confronted with that secret during an argument . . . being called a bastard is a remarkably influential way to cause a person to shut up. i felt a lot of shame during this time in my life because of these situations. . . i didnt talk about my father much with friends after that.
throughout high school i was exceptionally numb to the idea that i was fatherless. the majority of my friends were from two parent households; and even of friends from divorced families- i was the only one who did not have a relationship with my father. but, i would never discuss it. i became a conversational wizard, of sorts- learning how to dodge questions about my 'parents' or to change the topic if family came up- i never wanted to feel like the odd one out.
my father wrote me for the first time my freshman year of high school. he said he had had heart surgery and had a specific thought before going in- that he might pass on and would have never had the opportunity to meet me.
a week before he wrote me i had a dream that i almost drowned on a boat. as i was sitting in the ambulance after being rescued my father came up to me with a huge bouquet of flowers. as he hugged me he told me that he thought that i could have died and he would never have had the opportunity to meet me.
i believe God was preparing me for that encounter.
my father and i wrote back and forth for the next couple years off and on. we still have yet to meet.
throughout my college life i experienced tremendous amounts of healing within myself in terms of my relationship with my father. i realized that its ok to be the odd one out- that it is our oddities that create beauty within this world. i also realized that i should never be afraid to share my story- for it is because of this story that i am who i am- flaws and all. that oddly enough, i am this woman now because i have not had my father in my life.
and that thing about pain . . . the amount of pain your heart can hold- i've learned, through trial and error, to view pain not as a curse- but, rather as a blessing. because, first, and on the most basic level if we dont know pain, we are unable to experience joy; secondly, pain is what bonds us to one another- the valleys of pain in our lives point out where we should bridge the deepest bonds in our friendships- it is where we are able to understand and feel empathy for another person. and as cliche as it may sound, i am convinced that the more pain your heart has held- the more love it is able to hold . . . and, in the end, how can that be anything but a blessing?
so, as strange as it may sound, i am not at all upset that my life has colored itself in these shades thus far. and, when my life is over- i hope people are able to say that this was a beautiful picture- the dyes of lack, the strokes of felicity, the brushes pain- it all.
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