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WesleyGlenn -> RE: How did the DAD'S in your life... (6/15/2008 10:37:52 PM)
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My mother and father married at a young age and my mother had me when she was 18 years old. My father was in the military at the time. He got discharged for beating down his seargent. That was his problem, violence. He beat my mother for 5 years and me on occasion. He was also a heavy drug user. Weed constantly and cocaine when he got around certain friends of his. My mother took me and left one day while he was at work. Next came the custody battles and being stuck in all of the he said/she said mess. My dad quickly found him another woman that he would marry and she had 3 kids. I remember being at my great grandmother's house, which was right across the street from the house me and my mother moved out of to get away from him, and seeing him play in the yard with her kids. It was devastating because he never played out in the yard with me. He always had something else that he was wrapped up in.
About 2 years went by on our own and my mother moved us in with another guy, whom she ended up marrying. There was always friction because he wasn't my real dad. When I was 8, I walked into the kitchen to say something to my mom and he put in his 2 cents. I told him that I wasn't talking to him, I was talking to my mother. He procedded to pick up a plastic pepper shaker that he had stolen from the local Hardees and hum it at me. It hit me above my left eye and cut me wide open. After that, all of the "I'm sorries" came. He put clothes on my back and food on my table for 11 years after that, but it meant nothing to me. All I could remember was a grown man who threw a pepper shaker at 8 year old and layed his eyebrow open.
In all of this my "real" father was trying to skip out on paying a measley $50 a week for child support. He had set up a secret meeting with his lawyer so she could "tell me what to say to the judge". When the court date came, the judge took me into his office. He asked me if my dad had been paying the money? I told him only a couple of times had he given it to me to give to my mother. I told the truth. Because of that, my father skipped out on me for 4 years. No phone calls, no birthday cards, no Christmas, no letters, no visits every other weekend (which was his custody arrangement), nothing. He even avoided family gatherings because he knew that I would be there. Finally, he popped up out of the blue one day and expected everything to be the way it was. It was normal for a while. But as I got older, I began to resent him for what he had done. It all culminated on a Christmas Eve when he handed me a birthday card that read to the effect of, "I've watched you grow from a child to a man over the last 18 years, blah, blah, blah..." I began to boil inside for the fact that he hadn't watched me grow at all. When I was young, he ran across the country as a trucker. He had every other weekend for 4 years and left me at my oma and opa's house for half of those. Then he disappears for 4 years. The next 5 years he showed up sporadically, when it was convenient to him. Watched me grow from a child to a man? Yeah, OK.
Because of these situations, I too had a tremendous problem with the label "Father". So when it came time to allow a heavenly "Father" to take over my life, there were big-time issues. All of the "why me's" and "why did You's" were hindering me from entering into a true relationship with God. I finally started to understand my calling and purpose about the age of 26. I had to "face to face" forgive both of my earthly fathers for the things that I had held onto about them for so long. When I did so, it was like tons of weight came off of my back. I still regularly see my step father because we work for the same company and him and my mother are still together. We get along well and I respect him for raising me. My real father and myself talk every now and again, but he changes phone #'s like I have to change my 8 month old's diapers. He's hard to keep up with. My heavenly Father and I walk hand in hand every day. I'm thankful to have a Father who loved me, wathced over me, and guided me into the person that I am today. Even when I felt I had no father at all.
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