Still Looking

I'll never forget driving in my car while doing home care one time and hearing an interview Dr. Dobson was doing on his daily Focus on the Family broadcast. The speaker said, "If a girl doesn't have the kind of father she needs when she's growing up, she will spend the rest of her life looking for him."

Those words made things make more sense to me. It made my interactions and hopes and disappointments in my husband and other men around me make more sense. It made some of my worst mistakes, although I still take ownership of them, make more sense. I believe with my whole heart that the words I heard that day are true.

I did go to the reunion I talked about last week over the weekend of the 4th. It actually went very well. I was able to see relatives that I haven't for a very long time and talk to "kids" I grew up with who are no longer kids that I haven't seen in an equally long time. I think spacing attending those reunions out a good 5-10 years might be a good idea! Despite the pain in the family, there were many people there who were genuine and genuinely living their lives for Christ and striving to do so in their own families. I am proud of that. Christ works in a family of hurt and it was beautiful to see His rays of light intermixed with the pain. I am grateful I went and stuck around long enough to see those lights.

This was my dad's family. My dad and I did not have a good relationship when I was growing up. There was quite a bit of pain involved and very little to balance it out. I can remember only a handful of times when we spent any time together. I don't believe I had the kind of father I needed.

After things completely fell apart in my family my dad did go to counseling and has received a lot of help and our relationship has improved a great deal. He is much more involved in our family than I imagined he would be and I'm seeing him spend time with my children in ways that didn't exist when I was growing up. That has been nice to see.

But it still hurts.

At the reunion this weekend, a relative whom I am very uncomfortable with, approached me. Even though nothing happened whatsoever, I still wanted someone to rescue me from that situation. (That could be a whole host of other issues though!) I had just talked to my dad a couple days before why I was uncomfortable with that person. Although he agreed I had reason to be uncomfortable, that confession didn't make him angry at or spend less time with that person. I was so disappointed in that, even if it wasn't reasonable to expect any involvement from him. As I've worked on the business, struggled in my marriage, experienced the isolation moving frequently brings and a whole host of other things, I've longed for someone, someone strong, to just hold me and tell me it would be okay. I don't think that's healthy as a grown woman. I think its there though because I think I missed being held and being told I could do "it" and that I was strong enough to get "it" done. I missed my dad saying he would be there when I didn't feel like I could do any of those things.

I go back and forth frequently in my relationship with my dad. Part of the time, I spend a lot of time with him and talk to him frequently and approach the relationship like we are close. The other times, when I feel disappointed by something I hoped he would do but didn't (in a fatherly way - like at the reunion), I again grow distant and just hurt when I see and talk to him.

I wish I knew what to do with that conflict. Is it normal?

Dear friends of ours visited us just before the reunion and talked to me about how I was feeling. They reminded me that until I have come to some kind of acceptance that that dad hole can't be filled in now that I'm grown it is going to still hurt - in a raw kind of way.

How many girls and women walk around this way, every day? Missing their dad from their childhood and having a hole that isn't filled in? How many women use it to view interactions with other men, make decisions and even interact with God? Probably too many for us to count. Only He knows and only with His help, grace and time will that acceptance come.

I think I'll just keep praying and see what happens. I know though that the same rays of light I saw at the reunion, I see with many men around us now. Men who are holding their little girls. Playing with them, kissing their foreheads, praying with them, just simply loving them. One of them is my husband. I am so incredibly grateful for the kind of father he is. It is so beautiful to see him loving our daughters and knowing that they will never have a hole because they've missed him. I thank God for that personal ray of light.

I know that same ray of light will come into my soul and fill that hole someday. Maybe not this side of heaven, but it will happen. And that gives me joy.