I'M BEING REAL ABOUT THIS

My dad passed away suddenly on Wednesday morning.   He hadn’t been well for months so we were kind of expecting it, but it came suddenly in the end.   Next time I’ll write about what I believe the Lord did during those final few days of his life, but for now I need to write about something else.  

People have called and messaged me and asked, ‘How are you?’   I’m actually okay, just at the moment.    Well, actually, I’m numb and perhaps the tears will come later but right now I’m too busy to stop.   The timing isn’t great but then it’s never a convenient time to lose a loved one.   I’m still in the midst of an ongoing legal battle that just isn’t ending even though the end is ‘just over the horizon’, ‘at the end of the tunnel’, ‘any day now’, and has been for over two years.   The emotional roller coaster of that has left me pretty numb and not really keen to process anything else.  

Those who know me well know that my relationship with my father was a difficult one.     I’m not missing Dad today particularly because I lost him many years ago, in terms of relationship.  

About ten years ago, I challenged him about his treatment of Mum and my brothers and myself.  He made it very clear that nothing was going to change and it was ‘my way or the highway’.  I finally got brave enough to choose the highway and risk his rejection.   I wasn’t prepared for the way he rubbished me to anyone who would listen.  Anyone who knew me even a little got dragged into his circle of validation and accusation.    With some people, the lies stuck, but for others who’d been hurt too, they saw through it.  

About four years ago, I challenged him about the various kinds of abuse we all copped from him behind closed doors, over many years.   He acknowledged the sexual abuse, but nothing else, and there was no apology offered, just an acknowledgement that it happened.   He didn’t acknowledge his behaviour towards my mum or my brothers.   That speaks for itself.   Did he not see it or did he just not see that it was wrong?  

So often, we look for and ask for validation or apology from those who hurt us, but we can’t wait for that.   We have to just let that go.  Perhaps that’s what forgiveness is about – letting go of not just the hurt but the need to have them own it.  

My brothers and I were in his room at the nursing home, standing by his bed, several hours after he’d gone, and we were saying that we half expected him to say something harsh to us while we were discussing what needed to be done.   Our minds knew that wasn’t going to happen and yet our hearts were bracing for it, waiting for the next round of criticism and harshly spoken demands.  It’s our hearts that know things because we’ve experienced it.   It’s our hearts that need healing.  

Don’t speak ill of the dead?   Not sure where that came from, but God asks us for truth.   If nothing else, I will be truthful with myself and with the Lord because there is freedom in that.    And He can show me where my heart is out of line.  But I have learnt the hard way that pretending isn't going to lead to healing, so I'm being real about this.  

As for forgiveness, that’s a work in progress.   We make a decision to forgive, and we should, and that’s been an ongoing choice for me.   But oftentimes, at key moments, and I guess this is a key moment, something rises up and we need to choose again and the forgiveness goes deeper.   

But forgiveness doesn’t equal closeness.   Closeness has to be safe, and with Dad it just wasn’t.   I kept a safe distance from Dad because I could not and would not agree to go along with his games and his need for control, particularly of Mum.    They both knew how to drag you into their dramas and use you as an audience, to get their way in a situation.   Distance is the best way to deal with that. 

I knew I couldn’t lean on Dad in any way, or give him any kind of vulnerability because he would exploit it.   So I didn’t.  Our interactions were always about him – how he was, what he needed, what he thought about things.   If he rang, it was always to ask me for something, never to ask how I was or did I need anything.   He remembered birthdays and Christmas – for us, our kids and our grandies.   He was good at that.   But you couldn’t trust yourself to him and really, that’s what there is to miss in a relationship – the closeness, the trust, the leaning on, the leaning in - and that’s been missing for a very long time.  So I’m not grieving like someone who had a good relationship with their dad.   I wish I was, but I can't pretend it was something that it wasn't.  

Dad had a fairly close relationship with my sister-in-law, Dee, and we are very grateful for that because he was actually letting her help him with financial and legal matters and just practical needs.   He leaned heavily on her, but he wouldn’t let us get close to him.   She challenged him about that, but he wouldn’t divulge his reasons.   

I posted his photo and a few words on a local memories page on Facebook, and it was interesting to hear some of the comments from people who’ve known him for years, through the gun club, through work, through family ties. 

A nicer bloke you’d never meet

He was so proud of you all.

He was such a gentleman.

They are hard comments to read but they actually confirm what my brothers and I said the previous day – he was two different people.   We didn’t get the nice bloke, the gentleman, the respectable man.    He never told us he was proud of us or that he loved us.   We got someone very different, as often happens in families.  

But it shouldn’t.    And because it did, we’re struggling with it because we’re not feeling what you should feel when your dad dies. 

A close friend asked me yesterday if I’m grieving and my response was, ‘I’ve been grieving for my father for many years’.  It’s been a slow and invisible grief, one that’s not easily understood by those who had a good relationship with their father.  For years I have grieved and wept for what could have been, what should have been, and I've done that mostly alone, not with the recognition that happens when someone dies.  

I’m trying to find some peace in all of this because I need it, and I need to not layer guilt on top of everything else – guilt that I don’t feel particularly sad and that I’m not grieving like others would, and like some expect me to.

And then I read the words to this song yesterday that my brothers want to play at his funeral.  Dad didn’t want hymns or Bible verses or anything ‘religious’.   Funnily enough, this song helps with the forgiveness because it reminds me that he was a person too.   When we can look beyond what they should have done, we can let it go and leave the outcome with the Lord, and that’s so important.   Perhaps that too is part of the forgiveness – letting go of even the reasonable expectations. 

Oh, before they turn off all the lights
I won't read you your wrongs or your rights
The time has gone
I'll tell you goodnight, close the door
Tell you I love you once more
The time has gone
So here it is

I'm not your son, you're not my father
We're just two grown men saying goodbye
No need to forgive, no need to forget
I know your mistakes and you know mine
And while you're sleeping I'll try to make you proud
So, daddy, won't you just close your eyes?
Don't be afraid, it's my turn
To chase the monsters away

Oh, well, I'll read a story to you
Only difference is this one is true
The time has gone
I folded your clothes on the chair
I hope you sleep well, don't be scared
The time has gone
So here it is

But for so many parents, especially of my father’s generation, they don’t see that they’re just people.  They see, probably because it was their model too, that they get to have God-like privilege and position, that they get to define their children, shape them, direct them (even well into adulthood), own them, contain them, control them and even abuse them.   That was certainly how Dad saw us – trophies and servants and sometimes objects.   

But God says otherwise about me, and it’s taken me this long to see that I am defined by HIM and not by my earthly father, because he was just a human.   He was shaped by his father and others, instead of letting his heavenly Father shape him and love him and tell him who he was and how much he was valued.   Even as an old man, my father was still fighting with his father, and resisting his heavenly Father because of that.  I’m sure that was behind a lot of his behaviour towards us.   It wasn't God's love that was shining through Dad;  it was his very limited  and conditional 'love'.   

But it’s what WE do from here on that will determine whether we repeat those generational cycles or set our children and grandchildren free to be all that God intends for them.  

My heavenly Father gets to define who I am and He can heal and He has and He does.   But we have to let Him, and give Him all the broken pieces.   He could have healed my father's wounds and perhaps at the end he finally allowed the Father to do that.  

We have to stop looking to the hurtful ones to heal us.  They simply can’t.   Only the Lord can do what is divine.   

Yesterday, the Lord led me to Psalm 45 again.

Listen, O daughter,
Consider and incline your ear;
Forget your own people also, 

and your father’s house;

So the King will greatly desire your beauty;
Because He is your Lord, worship Him.  

Psalm 45:10,11

I will worship the One who should have that worship, and I will love everyone else.  

I will continue to be honest with myself, with Him, and with those who can handle it. 

Mercy and truth have met together;
Righteousness and peace have kissed.  Ps 85:10

I will get my value and my identity and my help from Him, in whatever way He chooses to give it, and through whom He chooses to give it.  

Sing to God, sing praises to His name;
Extol Him who rides on the clouds,
By His name Yah,
And rejoice before Him.

A father of the fatherless, a defender of widows,

Is God in His holy habitation.
God sets the solitary in families;
He brings out those who are bound into prosperity;
But the rebellious dwell in a dry land.  Psalm 68:4-6

 

I run to the Father
I fall into grace
I'm done with the hiding
No reason to wait
My heart needs a surgeon
My soul needs a friend
So I'll run to the Father
Again and again
And again and again
Oh, oh, oh

You saw my condition
Had a plan from the start
Your Son for redemption
The price for my heart
And I don't have a context
For that kind of love
I don't understand
I can't comprehend
All I know is I need You