Letter to my father

Father,

I am in love.  I love this man, one you know very well actually.  You know more about him than I ever could, though, I have tried.  They say women are attracted to men who are similar to their fathers, and it is so true.  As your daughter, I am attracted to him because of his physical strength, his handsomeness, his intelligent, his thirst for knowledge.   Just like you, he is wonderful in so many ways.  I wish and dream of the day I could be his bride, all wrapped up in his love.  Love, what an amazing feeling.

Yet, this love is so not perfect, not like yours.  His heart is part mine and part of something else, something dark.  Just like me, he is attracted to this world, to the empty promises of your enemy.  Lust, pride, selfishness, sexual lures and the empty ambition of conquering the world and its people fill that darkness.

So father, you are the creator of this world.  You made me in your image, you made him in your image.  I belong to you, and he belongs to you.  My heart is your, and his heart is yours.  Can you change our hearts to mirror yours?  Can our love be perfected in yours?

I await your answer.  I love you Father. Thank you for loving me regardless of my imperfect heart.

 

Lies we tell ourselves as young women looking for love in a fallen world

I never knew what it meant to have a parent.  My mother raised 3 kids on her own.  Naturally, that equated to no time for loving, just more time for work so she could put food on the table. 

I grew up with my grandmother who also single handedly raised her daughter.  My grandfather was killed in the Vietnam war when my mother was only 3 years old.  My grandmother never remarried again.  Grandpa was the love of her life, and no man could ever come close to being him.  

My mother grew up with this love story.  She followed her heart in search of that amazing and great love that my grandmother had.  Then she met my dad, against everyone’s advice, my mom married a womanizer who also turned out to be a cheater, liar and physical abuser.  

Now, we have 2 generations of females growing up with no father figures.  My mother  who never  knew what it meant to have a father, and I have no idea what it means to not have the love of my life walk out on me. 

The lies I kept telling myself: they all leave, you could have done something to keep them, you were not good enough.  Those are all lies.  Yet, I faithfully believe in them day by day.  The lies sneaked into the back corner of my brain, hid inside my veins and buried themselves  under my skin.  

The whole time, I forgot to realize that this world is a fallen world.  My father walked out on me when I was 4.  There was nothing I could do to stop him.  He had a choice to stay.  Everyone in our family wanted him to stay, and he chose not to.  My mother remarried, my step dad never left, he stayed.  So they don’t all leave, and I am good enough. 

There will be more men that I will encounter in this life.  There will be men who will leave, but there will be men who will stay.  There will be men who will look at me as an object of their fantasy, and there will be men who will respect me because I am created in the image of God just like them.  There will be men who will cheat, but there will be men who will resist the temptations.  There will be pain, but there will also be love.  There will be lies, but the truth remains: I am strong, I am valuable, and I am worth it.