For too long I had dammed a stagnant stream, backed it up in an effort to move forward in a more expedient and mundane direction. Life took precedence over the detritus of the past that festered and rotted, clogging some deep spiritual reserve that had always whispered, "God is good." I could still hear a chorus chanting of His might and sovereignty. God can know all and do all capriciously without "caring" particularly for the specifics of His creation. My parched heart would cup its hands and try to drink from the stream of His benevolence; but, just as the proffered sweetness reached my lips, I would remember loss and all would evaporate.
I did not quit my God; I could not forsake the One I had loved so long. But, I no longer trusted Him. He seem arbitrary with our lives; and, His power, which is beyond understanding, was confounding and oblique, not counterintuitive and wise. Best to put distance between myself and His electrifying, untamed hand.
The presence of a vacuum, at first just a whispering, a hint of discontent, made me edgy. A craving, undefined and subtle at its root, spread like a soul-eating bacteria until it had created a surprising cavern of need so great it must be abated. Emptied of the goodness of God, convinced of His reticence, the hollow cravings called out to another to be satisfied.
In 1993, Bill and I purchased a tutoring franchise, and the first three years I spent long hours growing it. By 1999, we had two facilities that were strong enough that I began to hire employees to take over some of my tasks. I rarely thought of my father in those years, and when I reached down to that place in me, it was too uncomfortable to pause there for long. I lived above that current, for touching it was like touching a live electrical wire. After experiencing the same reaction from that contact each time, I finally avoided it all together. I was also aware there was no closure for me with my father because I was convinced he still molested children, though I could not prove it.
In June of 1999, on my thirtieth wedding anniversary, I received a letter from one of my two sisters that began the demolition of my dammed up stream. The ugly water had to gush out sometime or kill me with its poison, but the timing was unfortunate for me. The gist of the letter was Daddy had carpal tunnel surgery on the tenth of June, and she and my other sister, in caring for him afterward, realized that he was going to need more intensive care as time went on. My relationship with both of my sisters had been strained for a while; so, the correspondence ended with, "We'll all need to participate. I'm hoping that you will be able to release whatever it is that keeps you from being willing to communicate with me. I'm not someone you need to avoid or be afraid of. I'm part of you family, warts and all."
The perceived unfairness of the closing words and their accusation that I had built the wall that separated me from her hit me broadside and threw me into a bizarre, screeching rage. I remembered her birthdays and Christmas! That was more than I got from her during those years! "Fuck her!" I screamed. "Fuck Daddy! I don't need any more condemnation! None of this is my fault!" My mouth regurgitated filth. Stomping around all three thousand square feet of my home, I swore and bellowed, cried and justified, until Bill shook my shoulders and talked me back to sanity. Some early smoke released from a deadly volcano. We had not known it was roiling so near the surface. Not an anniversary I choose to remember.
Two weeks later, I received a letter from my older sister. The last time I had spoken to her was the previous Christmas when I had called her. Apparently, I spoke too much about my feelings about Daddy, which was my wont, most certainly. With her husband sleeping, she cut the conversation short. Her letter began, "I've been thinking of you a lot lately. I know we're very different, and that you wish you had a different family. Many people do, myself included, sometimes. However, we are who we are, and we've got what we've got. My apprentice asked me her 'question of the week' yesterday - if you had one lesson that you wish you had learned earlier, what would it be? I had to think a long time...the principal one I came up with was this - not to live in the past and keep recreating it, but to live in the future and create that." My sister went on to say that Daddy was old, frightened, and guilt-laden, and she wanted to forgive him while he was here and because it was healing to her. The family needed me and I needed to "rejoin" it to help "see him through."
The smoke again. A boiling, steamy mess rising up in me. We did not know the same father. Frightened, old, and guilt-laden and done with boys? I did not think so! I had seen him with children recently. She had taken the "high road" and forgiven our father, and I should do the same! Again, it was I who had relinquished my family. They had no part in that? Shaking, wanting a voice, I crumpled in my living room floor and wept the inequity into the hands covering my face. No, I had not forgiven him! How do I forgive what has not come full circle? There is no cleansing in the forgiving of a crime still in progress! My quandry was how to live in the midst of the ongoing chaos and still protect my sanity and my children.
I did not respond to their letters for several days. I wanted an appropriate reply, not one filled with the histrionics I was manifesting. My response was, for me at the time, measured. My sisters were correct in their assessment of my need to forgive so that I could let it go. There was an endless, surging surf of buried words, thoughts and feelings that once given power by the slightest wind would pound mercilessly from my fractured heart. No catharsis seemed in sight for me. My father and I were at an impasse. My letter, in part, was an effort to explain the inexplicable. "My latency in responding to you has not been over a lack of love for Daddy or an inability to forgive him. I have always been there when I am needed and have no intention of leaving his care up to the two of you..Daddy recently wrote a letter to Bill commending him for his ability to stand by Daddy and love him regardless of circumstances. I was absolutely left out of that scenario though it was I who had picked him up from jail, despite Mother's desire to leave him there, offering to take him home with me. He came to California on two separate occasions to visit the ten-year-old boy next door and tried to correspond with him, leaving me with the responsibility of telling the boy's mother that my father is a pedophile and must not be allowed to contact Daddy. Afterward, I made another effort to speak with him about his difficulties and was screamed at that I was never, NEVER to bring up that subject again as long as I lived. Subsequent conversations with him would cause me to immediately have the runs so that I was virtually sitting on the pot crapping while listening to him speak. Two years ago, when I discovered he was teaching children's Sunday school and having a young boy from his church spend the night with him occasionally, I called and said I would say what I needed to say and if he would not listen, I was no longer his daughter, for I could not live the rest of my life in the position into which he had forced me. He listened. He did not reply. That is where we are. Never has it been acknowledged that I was there for him, trying to understand his difficulties, praying and fasting that he would not go to prison. Never has he understood what it took to have him in my home after he took Will to the park for hours without telling me where he was. He does not have the capacity to understand. That is not a thing of the past. That is a reality of the present. I have forgiven the past, but I take care of my family and myself in the present. So, let's just be honest and say you both need my time and monetary resources to take care of Daddy and we need to get along in order to provide whatever care he needs. I understand your need to contact me for the benefit of help. As with Mother, none of us wants to do this by ourselves. I do not know specifically what it is you want me to do. What is it that you need from me now?"
I ended the letter with this: "I am as mature about this situation as is possible for me, and it seems, as the two of you are. So, please try not to couch your desire for me to be available in this situation with any more insinuations, intentional or unintentional, that I cannot accept you or do not love Daddy or wish you were not my family. The real issue here is Daddy, and he is difficult for all of us. Love, Kay.
On my fifty-first birthday, I received a response to my letter. It was honest and heartbreaking once again. This land of forgiveness into which my sister wanted me to venture, unfettered, seemed a foreign destination, and I had no clear road map to it. She did not want to talk with me about Daddy's problems any more as we had better things to discuss. Of course, she was right. Her list of offenses was also long, but she had overcome. We all agreed that we needed to unite for Daddy's care, and her final suggestion, a wise one, was that we meet together to talk over what we were willing and able to do for him. For years afterward, Bill opened letters from my family before I read them. I was just not whole.
They made me look, the sincere words of my sisters. My own heart was diseased and attacking me. It was dark and angry, insistent in its quest to destroy me. I wanted to run, though I could not say to where. To comfort? To a well from which I could drink some joy? That race is destructive; I came upon a spider's web, and it entangled me. The wicked ruse is that pain will take a broken spirit by the hair and drag it into more pain, nearly destroying the will to fight and live.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
2005
"Enemy, don't laugh at me. I have fallen, but I will get up again. I sit in the shadow of trouble now, but the Lord will be a light for me. I sinned against the Lord, so he was angry with me, but he will defend my case in court. He will bring about what is right for me. Then he will bring me out into the light, and I will see him set things right." Micah 7: 8-9 (New Century Bible)
My Bible was my necessary food as I made my way back to God. Micah 7:8-9 became my life verse, and I quoted it daily, knowing that my responsibility was to get up again and start walking with God. His responsibility was to show me where to go. I sent these verses to my father with a note explaining briefly how they were changing my heart. I did not want him to depend upon me for spiritual guidance because there was too much room for manipulation on his part if I pulled in that close to him again. "Please, Father, give Daddy his own, authentic relationship with You." My daily prayer.
For a second time, Daddy did not receive jail time for his molestation charges; however, the court appointed a trained chaperone to escort him to church services because vulnerable children would inevitably be present. That is how Daddy became friends with Jesse, a Christian man who volunteered to watch over the sad elderly convicted felon who was a member of Jesse's church. Accountability is a powerful deterrent against recidivism and an effective agent for the stripping off of the false self in order to expose the real self. Countless hours of confrontation and conversation, of confession and contrition, bonded my father to Jesse in trust as God began to peel away the layers of manipulative masking the pedophile father had worn for decades. The process was deeply painful and was the catalyst for ugly arguments with Jesse.
Court ordered counseling was also once again mandated. This time, however, Daddy was less reticent to expose himself to the process. He was required to journal and to complete probing homework assignments. His first task seemed to be coming to grips with the fact that his homosexual pedophilia was wrong! Justification and denial had been twin companions of his for so long that they had to be slain before light could be shed on the abject depravity of his actions.
The love and support of the very congregation Daddy had sinned against was nothing short of miraculous. If my father is in the presence of the Lord today it is because the people of his church loved Daddy despite his sin, giving him the freedom to seek a merciful, gracious Father. The church became his lifeline in their compassion.
Daddy had been trapped for most of his life in a dark pit, stuck in the deep, thick clay that made his movements constricted and kept him from climbing to the light. The decision to escape this pit of addiction, helped along by his second debasing arrest, was an arduous choice, at best. My father had his first sexual experience at the age of twelve, with a man. By the time he was fifteen, he had had other homosexual encounters. His sexual history necessarily had barnacled to it every fathomable manipulation - lying, justifying, minimizing and blaming. In order to throw off the darkness of the pit, Daddy would have to experience the blinding light of revelation not only on the perils of pedophilia, but on the reprobate actions he had always employed to live his covert lie. Had Daddy not had Jesse, he might have lacked the raw courage to boldly look at the pedophile he was.
On June 19, 2005, I received a letter from Daddy.
Proverbs 3:11-12
Dear Ones,
Eighteen long months have passed since God began His chastisement. I do not despise this nor do I detest His correction. Rather, I praise Him in this period of darkness as He takes things of the flesh from me and reveals many of life's secrets. More and more each passing hour He strips away all veneer and reduces me to utter dependence on Him! I revel in the light that inserts into the darkness. He teaches me how to budget my time and my finances; how to depend on public transportation; that even my breathing (supported by oxygen) is in His hands! Still, He permits the darkness, yet a little while, to continue until I learn the infinite completeness of His will and desire for me. When His light completes its victory over the darkness, then shall I claim Micah 7:8-9 as my prize!
I love you,
Daddy
P.S. Your thoughtful Father's Day gift was an extra ray of light thrust into the darkness!
Hopeful, I tucked the letter away with the others and prayed because, I, too, know what it is like to cry out for forgiveness and restoration from the God I have disappointed. Somewhere in that deep despair is a gift from Christ - the realization that it is much more painful, finally, to hold onto the addiction than it is to walk out of it; it is just harder to walk free. It is dark either way, but there is His light at the end of the tunnel. Daddy, I prayed, was walking toward it and discovering his true self in the process.
My Bible was my necessary food as I made my way back to God. Micah 7:8-9 became my life verse, and I quoted it daily, knowing that my responsibility was to get up again and start walking with God. His responsibility was to show me where to go. I sent these verses to my father with a note explaining briefly how they were changing my heart. I did not want him to depend upon me for spiritual guidance because there was too much room for manipulation on his part if I pulled in that close to him again. "Please, Father, give Daddy his own, authentic relationship with You." My daily prayer.
For a second time, Daddy did not receive jail time for his molestation charges; however, the court appointed a trained chaperone to escort him to church services because vulnerable children would inevitably be present. That is how Daddy became friends with Jesse, a Christian man who volunteered to watch over the sad elderly convicted felon who was a member of Jesse's church. Accountability is a powerful deterrent against recidivism and an effective agent for the stripping off of the false self in order to expose the real self. Countless hours of confrontation and conversation, of confession and contrition, bonded my father to Jesse in trust as God began to peel away the layers of manipulative masking the pedophile father had worn for decades. The process was deeply painful and was the catalyst for ugly arguments with Jesse.
Court ordered counseling was also once again mandated. This time, however, Daddy was less reticent to expose himself to the process. He was required to journal and to complete probing homework assignments. His first task seemed to be coming to grips with the fact that his homosexual pedophilia was wrong! Justification and denial had been twin companions of his for so long that they had to be slain before light could be shed on the abject depravity of his actions.
The love and support of the very congregation Daddy had sinned against was nothing short of miraculous. If my father is in the presence of the Lord today it is because the people of his church loved Daddy despite his sin, giving him the freedom to seek a merciful, gracious Father. The church became his lifeline in their compassion.
Daddy had been trapped for most of his life in a dark pit, stuck in the deep, thick clay that made his movements constricted and kept him from climbing to the light. The decision to escape this pit of addiction, helped along by his second debasing arrest, was an arduous choice, at best. My father had his first sexual experience at the age of twelve, with a man. By the time he was fifteen, he had had other homosexual encounters. His sexual history necessarily had barnacled to it every fathomable manipulation - lying, justifying, minimizing and blaming. In order to throw off the darkness of the pit, Daddy would have to experience the blinding light of revelation not only on the perils of pedophilia, but on the reprobate actions he had always employed to live his covert lie. Had Daddy not had Jesse, he might have lacked the raw courage to boldly look at the pedophile he was.
On June 19, 2005, I received a letter from Daddy.
Proverbs 3:11-12
Dear Ones,
Eighteen long months have passed since God began His chastisement. I do not despise this nor do I detest His correction. Rather, I praise Him in this period of darkness as He takes things of the flesh from me and reveals many of life's secrets. More and more each passing hour He strips away all veneer and reduces me to utter dependence on Him! I revel in the light that inserts into the darkness. He teaches me how to budget my time and my finances; how to depend on public transportation; that even my breathing (supported by oxygen) is in His hands! Still, He permits the darkness, yet a little while, to continue until I learn the infinite completeness of His will and desire for me. When His light completes its victory over the darkness, then shall I claim Micah 7:8-9 as my prize!
I love you,
Daddy
P.S. Your thoughtful Father's Day gift was an extra ray of light thrust into the darkness!
Hopeful, I tucked the letter away with the others and prayed because, I, too, know what it is like to cry out for forgiveness and restoration from the God I have disappointed. Somewhere in that deep despair is a gift from Christ - the realization that it is much more painful, finally, to hold onto the addiction than it is to walk out of it; it is just harder to walk free. It is dark either way, but there is His light at the end of the tunnel. Daddy, I prayed, was walking toward it and discovering his true self in the process.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
1976
Albert Jackson Strickling came into this world on August 6, 1882, the same year as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Aloise Hitler, the elder half-brother of Adolf, James Joyce, John Barrymore and Samuel Goldwyn. On their way out were Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Charles Darwin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Mary Todd Lincoln. Jesse James was shot in the back of the head by Robert Ford, and Charles J. Guiteau was hanged for the assassination of President Garfield. It was a momentous year for births and deaths.
Ninety-four years later, on May 25, 1976, A.J. Strickling did not wake up in this world. Howard Hughes had died in April and Mao Zedong would breathe his last in September of 1976. Jimmy Carter would become president of the United States in November, and Microsoft was formed that same year by a couple of computer geeks. For my father, the momentous decisions A.J. made between 1882 and 1976 were more significant than the history being made while the man was growing older, and those choices were the catalyst for Daddy's reaction to the pre-dawn phone call from Ohio that May morning to be fraught with confusion and emotional upheaval.
I had only seen my grandfather, Pop, once, that I remember. We had lived for a couple of years in Lake Charles, Louisana, when I was five or six years old. We girls had been told Pop was coming to visit us there, and his impending presence seemed to precipitate an unusual bustling in the house. Of course, I did not know what I know now and did not think to question why this would be my first peek at the man who had fathered my father.
Mother made a delicious meal, I am sure, and had set out her crystal and china to welcome this wayward parent. He was, as might be expected, late. We sat around watching the proverbial "pot boil" until finally we saw an enormous Cadillac pull into our driveway. Unrolling one arm and one leg at at time, out of the driver's seat was Daddy's daddy. Onto his bald head he placed a large hat which he had reached for from the passenger seat before he stood fully beside the car. I had never seen such a fat man! He buttoned his coat over his enormous belly and shook hands rather formally with Daddy. He smelled of aftershave and sweat, and he barely looked at his three gaping granddaughters standing in the driveway. The visit, for me, was a non-event, as I cannot recall anything except the fact that he could not see his feet and had difficulty putting his shoes on.
Though Grandmother Smith, Celestia, stayed with us on a rather frequent basis when we were young, I do not recall any conversations about or references to Pop. Daddy had put him and his abandonment away; but, it had shaped his entire life! After Pop's visit, we girls asked Daddy why we had never seen him. That is when our father told us the story about A.J. leaving the dollar bill on the ironing board and walking out for good.
I can only imagine how difficult that short visit from Pop was for Daddy. Years of dammed offenses pushing against his heart, needing to be addressed. Fear of further rejection keeping them at bay. The man was present before Daddy so that he could look into his eyes and ask, "Why did you leave me? Why did you not love me?" But, the questions would never be asked or answered, as the phantom father had no response that would heal the wounded heart of his son. Pop probably did not know why he did not care enough to stay. Surely he had not thought deeply about Jim, then or now. Jim still needed a father who would never manifest.
Upon Pop's physical death, all earthly opportunities to get some closure on his childhood disappeared for Daddy. His first response was to brush the death of his father off. "I'm not going to Ohio for that!" But as he began reminiscing with Mother about his life as a boy, he decided to make the trip with her to Ashland, Ohio, for the funeral.
The small commuter plane landed at Ashland County Airport the afternoon before the services. Mother and Daddy rented a car and drove south on Route 58 into downtown Ashland. My father was uncharacteristically sullen and terse, his mind and heart in a necessary reverie, forced to touch the buried mutiny of a childhood spoiled.
Though his living brothers and sisters were there, they had not had his same history with Pop. Their grieving, such as it was, did not touch the place his father's death reached in Daddy. As Mother and he turned from the open grave, past the stands of carnations and empty folding chairs, and walked to the rental car after the funeral, a sob arose in Daddy, then tears he could not control. Mother knew only to hold his hand, for the crying was not for the beloved lost patriarch of the Strickling clan, but for the Daddy who did not love him. Words cannot recoup such a loss.
Once safely inside the car, Daddy leaned his arms and head against the steering wheel and sobbed, Mother patting his back, sorry for his pain. From out of his coat pocket, my father finally pulled a handkerchief, blew his nose and started the car. He drove down Main Street to the middle of Ashland. The late spring day was marked by sunshine and a light breeze, so he rolled his car window all the way down and took a deep breath. Getting his bearings, he turned up Union Street and announced to Mother that he was going to find his home - the one A.J. deserted. It took some time to locate the old neighborhood, but when he pulled the car up in front of the tiny house in which he had been reared, tears came again. This time for the little boy who had stood at the screen door watching his daddy walk away.
Hoping perhaps for a catharsis that did not present, Daddy went back to Texas still fatherless and abandoned. No real epiphany calmed the turmoil of his rejection. There was no closure but death. The sins of his father hung with impunity in the caverns of Daddy's memories, forever unconfessed and never atoned for.
Ninety-four years later, on May 25, 1976, A.J. Strickling did not wake up in this world. Howard Hughes had died in April and Mao Zedong would breathe his last in September of 1976. Jimmy Carter would become president of the United States in November, and Microsoft was formed that same year by a couple of computer geeks. For my father, the momentous decisions A.J. made between 1882 and 1976 were more significant than the history being made while the man was growing older, and those choices were the catalyst for Daddy's reaction to the pre-dawn phone call from Ohio that May morning to be fraught with confusion and emotional upheaval.
I had only seen my grandfather, Pop, once, that I remember. We had lived for a couple of years in Lake Charles, Louisana, when I was five or six years old. We girls had been told Pop was coming to visit us there, and his impending presence seemed to precipitate an unusual bustling in the house. Of course, I did not know what I know now and did not think to question why this would be my first peek at the man who had fathered my father.
Mother made a delicious meal, I am sure, and had set out her crystal and china to welcome this wayward parent. He was, as might be expected, late. We sat around watching the proverbial "pot boil" until finally we saw an enormous Cadillac pull into our driveway. Unrolling one arm and one leg at at time, out of the driver's seat was Daddy's daddy. Onto his bald head he placed a large hat which he had reached for from the passenger seat before he stood fully beside the car. I had never seen such a fat man! He buttoned his coat over his enormous belly and shook hands rather formally with Daddy. He smelled of aftershave and sweat, and he barely looked at his three gaping granddaughters standing in the driveway. The visit, for me, was a non-event, as I cannot recall anything except the fact that he could not see his feet and had difficulty putting his shoes on.
Though Grandmother Smith, Celestia, stayed with us on a rather frequent basis when we were young, I do not recall any conversations about or references to Pop. Daddy had put him and his abandonment away; but, it had shaped his entire life! After Pop's visit, we girls asked Daddy why we had never seen him. That is when our father told us the story about A.J. leaving the dollar bill on the ironing board and walking out for good.
I can only imagine how difficult that short visit from Pop was for Daddy. Years of dammed offenses pushing against his heart, needing to be addressed. Fear of further rejection keeping them at bay. The man was present before Daddy so that he could look into his eyes and ask, "Why did you leave me? Why did you not love me?" But, the questions would never be asked or answered, as the phantom father had no response that would heal the wounded heart of his son. Pop probably did not know why he did not care enough to stay. Surely he had not thought deeply about Jim, then or now. Jim still needed a father who would never manifest.
Upon Pop's physical death, all earthly opportunities to get some closure on his childhood disappeared for Daddy. His first response was to brush the death of his father off. "I'm not going to Ohio for that!" But as he began reminiscing with Mother about his life as a boy, he decided to make the trip with her to Ashland, Ohio, for the funeral.
The small commuter plane landed at Ashland County Airport the afternoon before the services. Mother and Daddy rented a car and drove south on Route 58 into downtown Ashland. My father was uncharacteristically sullen and terse, his mind and heart in a necessary reverie, forced to touch the buried mutiny of a childhood spoiled.
Though his living brothers and sisters were there, they had not had his same history with Pop. Their grieving, such as it was, did not touch the place his father's death reached in Daddy. As Mother and he turned from the open grave, past the stands of carnations and empty folding chairs, and walked to the rental car after the funeral, a sob arose in Daddy, then tears he could not control. Mother knew only to hold his hand, for the crying was not for the beloved lost patriarch of the Strickling clan, but for the Daddy who did not love him. Words cannot recoup such a loss.
Once safely inside the car, Daddy leaned his arms and head against the steering wheel and sobbed, Mother patting his back, sorry for his pain. From out of his coat pocket, my father finally pulled a handkerchief, blew his nose and started the car. He drove down Main Street to the middle of Ashland. The late spring day was marked by sunshine and a light breeze, so he rolled his car window all the way down and took a deep breath. Getting his bearings, he turned up Union Street and announced to Mother that he was going to find his home - the one A.J. deserted. It took some time to locate the old neighborhood, but when he pulled the car up in front of the tiny house in which he had been reared, tears came again. This time for the little boy who had stood at the screen door watching his daddy walk away.
Hoping perhaps for a catharsis that did not present, Daddy went back to Texas still fatherless and abandoned. No real epiphany calmed the turmoil of his rejection. There was no closure but death. The sins of his father hung with impunity in the caverns of Daddy's memories, forever unconfessed and never atoned for.
Friday, December 4, 2009
1989
Calvary Chapel church was hosting a women's retreat in the Arrowhead Mountains in early 1989. I would not have gone except for the urging of a new friend I had made in the fall when I began teaching at a local high school. Teri was a beautiful woman with massive amounts of curly hair cascading everywhere around her lightly freckled face. She was the secretary to the school counselors and had a real heart for the students, as I did. We connected almost immediately and found great commonality in our beliefs. I had only just begun to wander with trepidations into the territory of speaking about my father. I could say that he was a child molester, but not without stomach cramps and tears. At least I could say it, though. There was some relief in even that.
I know that I wore on my face and in my countenance the strain of carrying Daddy's difficulties and Mother's death. I had put 1985, for the most part, on some interior shelf, and it stayed perched there until occasionally a light would shine on it, exposing anew its presence. Teri noticed this posturing of mine and asked me questions. That was a gift. So, I told her and waited for the descending shame. There was none.
"Come with me to women's retreat, Kay," she pleaded. "You will be refreshed."
There are so many preparations to be made for a busy mother to leave home for the weekend that the thought of driving up to the mountains to retreat sounded daunting. Bill encouraged me, however; so, I decided to go, though I did not really relish the idea of being with a gushing group of women I did not know. My pain had introverted me somewhat. I was living over it as best I could, but the stream was always flowing just beneath the surface. It made me uncomfortable with myself as though something intrinsically wrong with me encouraged the discord that kept my heart and mind out of sync. I did not call it shame then because I did not know its name at the time. I just understood that whatever the debris was floating in that river of hurt, it made me want to run away. How can a person run from what one takes with her?
While I was packing the old peach and green colored comforter and folding my jeans and sweaters, I remembered a counselor friend of mine telling me I should write a letter to my father. The contents of this letter would ultimately be healing because I would tell him how he hurt me. This letter I would not mail, but simply burn, shred or pitch. The point was to articulate. I put my shampoo, curling iron, and hair dryer in my suitcase atop my clothes and thought writing the letter would be a good idea for me. I determined to get alone on the mountain and regurgitate pain onto paper.
I picked Teri up at her home and we set out late on a Friday afternoon. The air was chilly and my big fluffy blue sweater felt soft and comforting. We talked non-stop through the weekend southern California traffic until we finally exited and turned left onto Highway 18 to Lake Arrowhead. The dusky pink light of the closing day fell softly on the large arrowhead that adorns the face of the mountain. The tension in my body began to fall away as we wound through fir trees and sheer rock walls up and up, four thousand feet to the retreat center. Clouds scented with pine hugged the sides of the cliffs and slowed us down as we passed through their misty frothiness. Our headlights were turned on by then and cars approaching through the fog seemed like ethereal balls of brilliance pressing in on us as if from some alien siege, starting small then shooting us past us in the night.
The main hall of the retreat center was, by contrast, too bright. It hurt my eyes at first and seemed to slam itself up against the promising peace of mind that had been growing in me as we ascended into the forest. It was loud, also. Two hundred women away from home, all talking at once. I knew only one of them. We found our room, which we shared with two other women, and began to unpack. We did not get far before there was a call to dinner. The cafeteria was literally packed with chewing, speaking, laughing women. It was hard not to notice the joy present; joy seemed like an old firend I had not seen in a very long time. I watched it more than partook of it; but, it was pleasant to be in the midst of such happiness again.
I did not sleep well that night. I rarely do my first night away from home, but that night my mind kept inviting me to pre-write the letter to my father. However, I would just get started and the entire endeavor would go dead - my mind, blank. I had still never cried about Mother's death or Daddy's arrest. Too ineffable to acknowledge tears. Articulation might be a dam breaker. Even my subconscious was afraid of the flood. I tossed and turned, anxious for dawn. I could not wait to get into my little black Pontiac and find some quiet, isolated place to talk to God.
By the time my three roommates awakened, I had showered and dressed and made my bed. Sitting atop the flowers of the comforter, I tried to read my Bible while they took turns in the bathroom and flitted about the room preparing for the day. I could not seem to quiet my mind or still my body. When the four of us were ready to go to the cafeteria, I bowed out, telling Teri I would meet her for lunch. She was a little disappointed, but I explained I needed time alone. We arranged a meeting place outside the eating area; and, I all but ran to the car, digging in my purse for the keys so that I could get into it quickly. I felt like I was about to make an escape, although I did not know "from" what or "to" what.
Once inside the car, with the heater blowing warm air and my heart racing, I pulled out of the parking lot and headed back out toward the highway. I was looking for a quiet, undisturbed place to ultimately pull over and be alone. Just before Running Springs, I noticed a small campground and drove into it. Hidden among the trees was a solitary spot just big enough for the car. I parked, turned the motor off and sat there taking deep breaths, wondering what to do next. I knew this was going to be an important moment for me, but I was not quite sure how to proceed.
Reaching over to the passenger seat, I grasped the pen and paper I had brought along with me.
"Dear Daddy...." I began. "I wish.." No. Erase that.
"Dear Daddy.." I tried again. "My hands look like yours, so I have acrylic fingernails now. It masks the shape of them - makes my fingers look longer so I do not think about you when I look at them now. Why did you keep your fingernails so long? It kinda made me sick."
I was crying by then, and nauseous. My reactions when it came to Daddy always surprised me. I looked at my hands and cried quietly for a while. Then I wrote again. "I have made some poor decisions with my own life, Daddy, because ..." I had to think why. What had driven my actions - was still driving them? I was barely hanging on emotionally, trying to function above the undercurrent of grief. I was about to reach down and touch that current, and I knew it would shock me.
I continued. "...because I think who I am changed when I found out who you are. It seems the weight of understanding all of this is so heavy sometimes that I want to escape it and find a place to be where this pain does not exist. I have run away from God, I think. I have hurt my husband."
Then I just felt dirty. Marred and useless. I could not get this right and had no idea where to begin. I sobbed and sobbed and the well became a prayer. I honestly did not know who I was anymore. Though it made little sense to me at the time, I understood that my father's pedophilia had somehow redefined me. He had covertly passed the gauntlet of shame to his children, and it had so clandestinely floated down upon me that until that moment I had not recognized its presence. I loathed a part of myself that I could not even find! Intrinsic, bottomless shame lurked about, an enemy too formidable for me to conquer yet.\
I cried out to God, throwing the useless missive to Daddy onto the floorboard of the car. I did not need to talk to Daddy; I needed God to talk to me! I crossed my arms in front of me on the steering wheel and laid my head against them, bowing before the only One I felt could give me any clarity.
"I don't know who I am anymore, God! I don't understand how to recreate my present in light of the redefining of my past. I have failed You in the process of coping."
As the words spilled out of me and onto God, it became clear that what I really wanted was His opinion -His acceptance.
"I feel unclean and ugly, Father," I cried. "It is as though I have been placed on hold or set out in the hall because I have been bad. I am a wanderer looking for home, disoriented and confused."
A question was forming itself as I prayed. It seem rhetorical - unanswerable save for some miracle. But I could not hold it back. I nearly screamed it! "God, how do You see me?"
It bounced off the car windows and seemed to echo around the interior for a few minutes. Then I became extraordinarily still. Spent. The question had gotten to the bottom of it. Did God still love me? I sat in a vacuum waiting for an answer.
I glanced at the clock. How it could already be time to meet Teri was beyond my understanding. I wiped my nose and my face with the tissues that were in the glove box, then started the car and left. The question still hung in the air as though freshly asked. How could I expect God to answer such a query? How foolish to ask it. What did I expect? An audible voice? "This is how I see you."
When I arrived at the retreat center, the morning session had not quite ended. I slipped through the back door and took a seat on the back row just as the leader told everyone to rise and sing the last worship song. I stood with the group and sang quietly, arms lifted up to God. The atmosphere was sweet and in it I felt a great sense of peace. My heart was focusing on God and not myself for the first time that morning. I was unaware of the women standing in front of me, and they seemed equally unaware of me; so, I was taken aback when one of them whirled around and grabbed my hand as soon as the singing ended.
"God told me to tell you that you are beautiful!" she proclaimed. "And you are!"
I know that I wore on my face and in my countenance the strain of carrying Daddy's difficulties and Mother's death. I had put 1985, for the most part, on some interior shelf, and it stayed perched there until occasionally a light would shine on it, exposing anew its presence. Teri noticed this posturing of mine and asked me questions. That was a gift. So, I told her and waited for the descending shame. There was none.
"Come with me to women's retreat, Kay," she pleaded. "You will be refreshed."
There are so many preparations to be made for a busy mother to leave home for the weekend that the thought of driving up to the mountains to retreat sounded daunting. Bill encouraged me, however; so, I decided to go, though I did not really relish the idea of being with a gushing group of women I did not know. My pain had introverted me somewhat. I was living over it as best I could, but the stream was always flowing just beneath the surface. It made me uncomfortable with myself as though something intrinsically wrong with me encouraged the discord that kept my heart and mind out of sync. I did not call it shame then because I did not know its name at the time. I just understood that whatever the debris was floating in that river of hurt, it made me want to run away. How can a person run from what one takes with her?
While I was packing the old peach and green colored comforter and folding my jeans and sweaters, I remembered a counselor friend of mine telling me I should write a letter to my father. The contents of this letter would ultimately be healing because I would tell him how he hurt me. This letter I would not mail, but simply burn, shred or pitch. The point was to articulate. I put my shampoo, curling iron, and hair dryer in my suitcase atop my clothes and thought writing the letter would be a good idea for me. I determined to get alone on the mountain and regurgitate pain onto paper.
I picked Teri up at her home and we set out late on a Friday afternoon. The air was chilly and my big fluffy blue sweater felt soft and comforting. We talked non-stop through the weekend southern California traffic until we finally exited and turned left onto Highway 18 to Lake Arrowhead. The dusky pink light of the closing day fell softly on the large arrowhead that adorns the face of the mountain. The tension in my body began to fall away as we wound through fir trees and sheer rock walls up and up, four thousand feet to the retreat center. Clouds scented with pine hugged the sides of the cliffs and slowed us down as we passed through their misty frothiness. Our headlights were turned on by then and cars approaching through the fog seemed like ethereal balls of brilliance pressing in on us as if from some alien siege, starting small then shooting us past us in the night.
The main hall of the retreat center was, by contrast, too bright. It hurt my eyes at first and seemed to slam itself up against the promising peace of mind that had been growing in me as we ascended into the forest. It was loud, also. Two hundred women away from home, all talking at once. I knew only one of them. We found our room, which we shared with two other women, and began to unpack. We did not get far before there was a call to dinner. The cafeteria was literally packed with chewing, speaking, laughing women. It was hard not to notice the joy present; joy seemed like an old firend I had not seen in a very long time. I watched it more than partook of it; but, it was pleasant to be in the midst of such happiness again.
I did not sleep well that night. I rarely do my first night away from home, but that night my mind kept inviting me to pre-write the letter to my father. However, I would just get started and the entire endeavor would go dead - my mind, blank. I had still never cried about Mother's death or Daddy's arrest. Too ineffable to acknowledge tears. Articulation might be a dam breaker. Even my subconscious was afraid of the flood. I tossed and turned, anxious for dawn. I could not wait to get into my little black Pontiac and find some quiet, isolated place to talk to God.
By the time my three roommates awakened, I had showered and dressed and made my bed. Sitting atop the flowers of the comforter, I tried to read my Bible while they took turns in the bathroom and flitted about the room preparing for the day. I could not seem to quiet my mind or still my body. When the four of us were ready to go to the cafeteria, I bowed out, telling Teri I would meet her for lunch. She was a little disappointed, but I explained I needed time alone. We arranged a meeting place outside the eating area; and, I all but ran to the car, digging in my purse for the keys so that I could get into it quickly. I felt like I was about to make an escape, although I did not know "from" what or "to" what.
Once inside the car, with the heater blowing warm air and my heart racing, I pulled out of the parking lot and headed back out toward the highway. I was looking for a quiet, undisturbed place to ultimately pull over and be alone. Just before Running Springs, I noticed a small campground and drove into it. Hidden among the trees was a solitary spot just big enough for the car. I parked, turned the motor off and sat there taking deep breaths, wondering what to do next. I knew this was going to be an important moment for me, but I was not quite sure how to proceed.
Reaching over to the passenger seat, I grasped the pen and paper I had brought along with me.
"Dear Daddy...." I began. "I wish.." No. Erase that.
"Dear Daddy.." I tried again. "My hands look like yours, so I have acrylic fingernails now. It masks the shape of them - makes my fingers look longer so I do not think about you when I look at them now. Why did you keep your fingernails so long? It kinda made me sick."
I was crying by then, and nauseous. My reactions when it came to Daddy always surprised me. I looked at my hands and cried quietly for a while. Then I wrote again. "I have made some poor decisions with my own life, Daddy, because ..." I had to think why. What had driven my actions - was still driving them? I was barely hanging on emotionally, trying to function above the undercurrent of grief. I was about to reach down and touch that current, and I knew it would shock me.
I continued. "...because I think who I am changed when I found out who you are. It seems the weight of understanding all of this is so heavy sometimes that I want to escape it and find a place to be where this pain does not exist. I have run away from God, I think. I have hurt my husband."
Then I just felt dirty. Marred and useless. I could not get this right and had no idea where to begin. I sobbed and sobbed and the well became a prayer. I honestly did not know who I was anymore. Though it made little sense to me at the time, I understood that my father's pedophilia had somehow redefined me. He had covertly passed the gauntlet of shame to his children, and it had so clandestinely floated down upon me that until that moment I had not recognized its presence. I loathed a part of myself that I could not even find! Intrinsic, bottomless shame lurked about, an enemy too formidable for me to conquer yet.\
I cried out to God, throwing the useless missive to Daddy onto the floorboard of the car. I did not need to talk to Daddy; I needed God to talk to me! I crossed my arms in front of me on the steering wheel and laid my head against them, bowing before the only One I felt could give me any clarity.
"I don't know who I am anymore, God! I don't understand how to recreate my present in light of the redefining of my past. I have failed You in the process of coping."
As the words spilled out of me and onto God, it became clear that what I really wanted was His opinion -His acceptance.
"I feel unclean and ugly, Father," I cried. "It is as though I have been placed on hold or set out in the hall because I have been bad. I am a wanderer looking for home, disoriented and confused."
A question was forming itself as I prayed. It seem rhetorical - unanswerable save for some miracle. But I could not hold it back. I nearly screamed it! "God, how do You see me?"
It bounced off the car windows and seemed to echo around the interior for a few minutes. Then I became extraordinarily still. Spent. The question had gotten to the bottom of it. Did God still love me? I sat in a vacuum waiting for an answer.
I glanced at the clock. How it could already be time to meet Teri was beyond my understanding. I wiped my nose and my face with the tissues that were in the glove box, then started the car and left. The question still hung in the air as though freshly asked. How could I expect God to answer such a query? How foolish to ask it. What did I expect? An audible voice? "This is how I see you."
When I arrived at the retreat center, the morning session had not quite ended. I slipped through the back door and took a seat on the back row just as the leader told everyone to rise and sing the last worship song. I stood with the group and sang quietly, arms lifted up to God. The atmosphere was sweet and in it I felt a great sense of peace. My heart was focusing on God and not myself for the first time that morning. I was unaware of the women standing in front of me, and they seemed equally unaware of me; so, I was taken aback when one of them whirled around and grabbed my hand as soon as the singing ended.
"God told me to tell you that you are beautiful!" she proclaimed. "And you are!"
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