Father's Day

Some people are cuddly close with their fathers. Their fathers are encouragers, and they feel loved.

My father is a good man. He always worked hard and supported his family. He put his six children through college, retired at the right age, built his dream house and now at age 81 is in those retirement years of life.

But my father and I are not close. There's no cuddly love, no encouragement. Rather, it is discouragement and the feeling that he has stamped a big "L" on my forehead for "loser." He even said today that he saw me living in a cardboard box under a bridge. That was his vision for me. The job I have isn't good enough to him because it has no benefits. It doesn't matter that it keeps the bills paid and a roof over my head and food on the table. It doesn't matter that I've covered my own medical expenses out of pocket for the last 10 years.

When times were hard for me and my cookie business, he and my mother made several loans to me to keep me afloat, and I haven't been able to pay them back yet. Just asking them for any loan at all was hard on me because it just seemed like that "L" got burned deeper into my skin.

But old wounds go deeper than that. Wounds of years of him being there but also being emotionally absent. The 9-minute phone call today was torturous. Part of me feels like if I never see him again, it really won't matter that much because I just don't measure up to whatever he thinks I should be.

But at age 50, I don't have to measure up to his "standards." I don't live under his roof and I never will again. Part of me doesn't ever even want to visit the state he lives in again.

Nevertheless, he is my dad and I did my duty and sent him a Father's Day card and called him today. But that's as much of a relationship as we have.

When I was about 10 years old, I went through some emotional issues and my school grades plummeted, and he and my mother took me to a psychiatrist to have some tests done to find out if I was just plain stupid. I didn't find out until years later that apparently the tests said that I was a genius.... well, at least according to the shrink's interpretations of the tests. So he held me to this unrealistic standard that I should be a genius and be acing every subject.... when in fact I struggled to concentrate, struggled to read out loud, struggled to see hidden meanings in things or to problem solve. I wasn't stupid by any means... just bored and unengaged by it all. It really wasn't until middle school (then called Jr. High) that some things started to make more sense to me. It wasn't until university, however, that I felt the freedom to actually study things of interest to me. The higher in learning I got, the better I did academically.

Satan would like to whisper in my ear that I really am a loser, but I know my Heavenly Father does not see me that way. Jesus is there for me to heal my wounded heart.

I have followed my interests and feel in some respects I've had a very varied life with lovely experiences. In some ways, a full life.

I'm struggling now to find that self again, to know what my next pursuit is. But in the meantime I will stay with the job that I have and press forward.