Disclaimers

It became evident after a rather jarring phone call from a loved one that perhaps last night's recent blog, "Letters from my Father(s)" needed a disclaimer.  It needed an explanation, perhaps, for the feelings behind the faux letter written, presumably, by my father.  Raw, insensitive, and as real as my childhood memories could fathom.

Then I began thinking that my life needed a disclaimer as well.  A sign from the car window:  WARNING, CONTENTS FRAGILE.  HANDLE WITH CARE.  BABY ON BOARD.  There's a certain amount of trust I must have with myself, a sense of humility to have the desire or will sometimes, to put fingers to keyboard and scribe a witness account of my life.  Its future has not yet been written, and the future cannot unveil itself to me because the past keeps wanting to "hang out."  God places a feeling, a wanting, on my heart, and grudgingly at times, change happens.  Sometimes I think I can change my future on my own, manipulate the present into life-long fix-it moments.  Good prayer, devotions, smiling.  As I've found, none of those things have a bearing on the next, as events happen sometimes without warning.  All these good works are meaningless.  This outward character building, on a strictly human level, is respected perhaps, maybe scorned by the cynic.  But as I've found out all too well, even being in deep prayer does not help you withstand the onslaught.  It helps you handle it better.  Quiets the meltdown.

OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN WHAT THEY SEEM.

So it was not without some trepidation that last night's post was sent to blog hell.  I have been leading a "Wild at Heart" study by John Eldredge.  It's all about realizing that man, us, me, have been placed on this earth for adventure, purpose and heart.  Most men who acknowledge they are Christians have lost their heart and their sense of adventure because the church has made them a "nice guy", work has desensitized their aggression, and their wives have emasculated them into domestic automatons.  Most men find that in their journey for adventure realize they have wounds, and almost always these wounds were given by their fathers.  The silence of their dads when they needed validation.  The dad who wasn't there.  The abusive dad.

My (two) dads were hardly abusive.  One was passive, the other aggressive, both distant.  In dealing with my hurts I was to write a letter as if they had left one behind.  Would they validate me?  Would they be proud of me?  Or would they simply reinforce the failure mentality that has been encrusted on me like the look of old rusted metal that flakes to the touch--lethal if embedded within the skin.

WARNING: CONTENTS MAY BE HARMFUL IF SWALLOWED.

And so the emotions came without regard to who read them.  They are MY memories.  Mine to embrace!  No, to embrace them means I become the very person I despise.  I teach that to my son.  The distant dad.  Go away.  Go play.  Be quiet.

Mine to dismiss.  The wounds don't matter.  No, they really don't.  Seriously.  Nothing to see here.  Move along, move along.

Mine to forget.  Bury.  No exhumation needed.  Scatter the ashes in the sea.  That's not sweat on my brow. Smile.  Wipe sweat.  Repeat.

THE VIEWS AND OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THIS ARTICLE REPRESENT A SINNER.


Eldredge says that the wound can rule over men.  In our meager efforts to withstand, we seek validation through women (pornography?  um, yeah) or in our work (yep, me too).  This came as a total shock to me.  I sat watching the video with my classmates and felt the punch-in-the-gut moment.  The devil loves this. You thought you had it all figured out.   I can make you feel better.  Liar!  And then I began writing.

The letter, in some form, will make it back on here.  Possibly not.  Healing only comes when I acknowledge that it mattered.  There has been forgiveness.  Does there have to be confrontation?  There is no sense bringing up hurts the other person wouldn't think to admit.  Instead, I'm breaking the cycle the only way I know how.  It takes throwing footballs with my son in the backyard.  Reading to him at night.  Praying together.  I have left wounds on my son I probably haven't even realized.  Or he may grow up to realize the blessings he had were training for something in his life.  What do I know about the future?