"love will come set me free..."

this is raw...so skip if you'd like...

They (whoever "they" are) say that as you get older, it's supposed to get easier to be more independent as you organize your own lives, find your own niche in the world.  It's never gotten one bit easier to be estranged from my father.  In fact, getting older has only compounded the hurt.  I didn't know how hard it would be to look in the eyes of my children, who have a dedicated, loving, compassionate father, and know that they have a grandpa, their own flesh and blood, they don't know at all.  And I've received all kinds of advice, wavering from "just let go" to "be the bigger person."  Well, I've tried both, and neither worked.

And then I remembered this passage from a book I re-read recently, and it made sense....a little.  There will always be that spot, raw and bruised, hopeful and spiteful all at the same time...a wound that always feels like the scab is being ripped off.  I'm still working on this.  I am.  Right now, that "working" means that I make myself so busy that I just simply can't think about it.  It is a tidal wave of grief, loss, and bitterness that ebbs and flows with my intense feelings of guilt and what could I have done better?

We recently took the kids to the NFL Experience downtown, and I took these pictures for my dad...the ever loving Browns fan...thinking that maybe I would be brave enough to send them...maybe I would be brave enough to write since other forms of communication were thwarted.  I probably won't.

I liked to think that they would make you laugh...your grandson laughing in his mom's arm and dreaming of being a football player someday.  But, alas, these are things you don't know, don't want to know.

  And I have to find a way to be myself, and be okay with that. 

and this reminded me that I need to be constantly reminding myself of THIS:

"Love is infinitely more powerful than hate."

"That might be your opinion"

"No, that is a fact.  You want to know how you really got here...really survived this far?"

I nodded.

"You survived by seizing every tiny drop of love you could find anywhere and milking it, relishing it, for all it was worth.  Your parents weren't all hate or abuse.  There were tender moments, whether or not you choose to remember them now.  There were those moments, however brief, when you felt safe.  You felt loved, and you savored every minute of it and held it closest to your heart.  And as you grew up, you sought love wherever you could find it.  For all these years, you've lived under the illusion that, somehow, you made it because you were tough enough to overpower the abuse, the hatred, the hard knocks of life.  But really you made it, because love is so powerful that tiny little doses of it are enough to overcome the pain of the worst life can dish out.  Toughness was a fault coping mechanism you devised to get by.  But, in reality, it has been your ability to never give up, to keep seeking love, and your resourcefulness to make that love last long enough to sustain you.  That's what has gotten you by."
(pp.157-158)
R. Reiland

Love.Love.Love.Love.Love.Love.
Keep giving it.
Keep receiving it.
Keep relishing it.

new mantra...

p.s. and also keep listening to brett dennan