Someday I hope to be able to say to my father in person, "I forgive you."

Someday I hope to be able to say to my father in person, "I forgive you." I know most people hunger to be able to express love or gratitude, especially on this day to honor our fathers. But the wounds of the past, now thankfully healed, and the fact that my father's life was taken by a drunk driver when I was 16, have confined my expression of forgiveness to a memoir I wrote many years ago called Killing the Helicopter Woman.
 
I think about him often when I hear the debate about whether we should refer to God as He, which to some perpetuates oppressive language. The argument is made that for people like me who suffered abuse at the hands of a father, or for others who have suffered at the hands of rigid patriarchal societies, the image of God the Father further subjugates us to male dominated societies and reinforces our victimization. And so God becomes She or It or The Creator or whatever neutral term serves the message, the music, the reference. It is a well-meaning attempt to help us embrace the concept without the negative baggage a name might carry.
 
As usual, I cannot speak for anyone but myself, but in the deepest part of me, today I wanted to honor my Father, not the one who created the wounds, but the one who healed me and saved me and made me whole. This Perfect Father taught me things that my earthly, imperfect one could not. This Father taught me that I am worthy of being loved regardless of what I had done in the past. This Father taught me that no matter how much I had prostituted myself in the world and its ways, to Him I would always be a beautiful bride.
 
When I despaired throughout my life, He never judged me but only gently held me and wept with me. When I wandered off like the prodigal I am, He whispered the way to walk and rejoiced when I changed direction. When I hungered for real love and intimacy, He taught me how a real Father loves a precious child.
 
This Father gave me the gift of Life, abundant life, and joy and peace beyond my ability to comprehend. But he also gave me two other precious gifts. His Word tells us that God has a name chosen for each of us that only He knows. One day, my husband, my first gift from God, gave me a card in which he wrote that he felt he knew what God's name for me would be. In the envelope was a small white stone on which my husband had carefully written my "new name" ... Beautiful. I have it with me always to remind me of how I am seen by my true Father.
 
But the second gift of my heavenly Father was greater still...the gift of forgiveness. When I received this gift, I was in the middle of writing these words in my memoir...

“In my dream, I see my father walking along a dirt road. I am on a hill, and the wind sifts through the awakening grass around me creating a smell of the turn of winter into spring.  My spirit is light and I watch him for a while as he struggles, bent over and awkward.  He carries a dirty brown bag, tattered and tied with rough rope, and the weight seems to overwhelm him.  I know that inside are all the deeds that shredded my existence...

                You deserve it, I hear myself think as I see him.  But there is something terribly wrong as soon as the words are out of my heart.  He is not all powerful, he is not a giant, he does not rule the world.  He is simply a man, small in stature and ego, full of defenses and mixed up wires somewhere in his brain. 

                As I watch his slow, measured step, I realize that I cannot do anything to help him.  He can not hear my voice, and if we were to come face to face, I already know that his eyes would be clouded with sorrow.  He has suffered enough.  And so have I.

                I start to sing a song in my heart.  I sing it to him across the grassy slope and it travels to the dusty road that carries his steps.  I sing it across the years that have been veiled or lost entirely to the weight of my own guilt and shame.  I sing it 'til the very throats of the world join in the chorus

                                If I were to see you struggling down a dusty road,

                                I would ask Jesus to lighten your load... 

                It is done now...he is free.

                And so am I.”

Someday, I pray that I will meet my earthly father face to face. I want to let him know I have learned that out of the greatest pain comes the greatest blessing. I want him to know that my wounds led me to the Healer, and the Healer led me to my Heavenly Father, who embraced me like the long lost child I was. I want him to know that I am at peace.
 
And I want my earthly father to know that now, in forgiving him, I am finally ready to love him.