Like many people, I was terribly afraid of God when
I was young, while at the same time assuming I would end up in heaven with him. Of course this had its downsides. For one thing, an eternity trying to please the Almighty seemed awfully tiring. Then as I grew older I began to be afraid heaven would be
like high school. You know, popular saints in cliques, ignoring me and my
friends while we tried to look righteous or at least like we hadn’t been let in
by mistake. The nicest mansions going to folks like St. Francis, C.S. Lewis,
and Billy Graham, with nerds like me being content to live (forever!) in a
double-wide far from the streets of gold. And if by some wild chance I were
invited to any parties, I would as usual end up alone, trying to look as if I
were having a good time standing on the sidelines, never being asked to dance.
Spiritual
roadblocks like fear of God and heaven paled beside the fear I had of my
father. God boomed thunder and struck people dead or turned them
into pillars of salt, and I wasn’t quite sure where he ended and my father
began. My father seemed like God because he was powerful and I never
knew when he would give in to rage. He cultivated the idea of a direct
line between himself and God, and he knew immediately if we did anything
wrong. With both of them I tried to stay invisible, do what I was told to
do, and not do what I was told not to do. Of course, this didn’t always
work.
When I was ten years old my parents often left me in charge of my younger
brother and sisters. I had been caring for my three siblings with less and less
supervision since I was eight and the baby was born. On this night, we
had spent the evening in the family room. We ate popcorn and watched TV,
and slowly everyone went to bed. Everyone but me.
Sometimes it’s hard to remember
something so long ago, but this was a memorable evening without the tensions
surrounding Mom and Dad and their constant conflicts. With the dim light
from the lamp and the sound of rain falling gently outside, I relaxed, enjoying
the rare opportunity of having the TV to myself. I lost track of
time until I heard a noise. It was my parents’ car; they were home.
I panicked. Not only was it
past my bedtime, but I had been watching television without express
permission. Enjoying myself made me feel even more guilty. So
I did the obvious thing: I turned out the light and the TV, ran to my
bedroom and flung myself under the blankets.
The wait was short. My father
burst into the room flipping on the lights, whipping off his belt, pulling me
out of bed by my arm, and yelling, all seemingly simultaneously. Without
questioning me or explaining why, he began to hit me, his shouting as painful
as the belt. The hitting continued as my father roared. I had not fooled him by
pretending I was in bed. He knew better. I was a bad child who deserved
worse punishment than he could give me. When his arm tired, or his anger
dissipated, or he grew ashamed, I’ll never know which, he dropped me back on
the bed and gritted the warning. “Don’t you ever lie to me
again. Ever.” Even when my mother told me the next day they had
seen the lights go out when they drove up, I was convinced God had told on me.
As I lay in bed, skin burning where
the belt had hit me, I struggled not to cry. My father might come back
and whip me again. I did what many children do when they live in a house
full of rage. I internalized my fears and guilt and tiptoed carefully
until I messed up again.
This is how I learned about God and
love. Love and fear were intertwined. Love and violence went hand
in hand. Love meant anger and pain. Love was measured out, or taken away, depending on how 'good' I was. God was to be feared because,
theoretically at least, he was even more powerful than my father.
When I left home at age nineteen, I
married a man who soon began to hit me. I stayed with him for three years
until I began to fear he might kill me. When I told my parents we were
splitting up, I was ashamed to tell them why. My father’s response to our
divorce was, “Remember? I told you it wouldn’t last five years!” He
had tried to convince me I shouldn’t marry this man, and now he was gleeful
because he had been right. He expressed no sorrow, offered no
hope. God had let him in on my future, and I should have listened
to his warning.
I was twenty-two years old, still
scared of my father, but beginning to feel anger. I never confronted him,
but avoided him as much as possible. Living 300 miles away from my
parents who were still busy with my younger brother and sisters, school and
work became easy excuses for my unavailability, and during infrequent phone
calls I became practiced at superficial, quick conversation.
As for God, I never shook my fist
at the sky or spat angry words at him. I knew better. But I did
stop going to church. I never talked to God or about God. I went
about my life quietly rebelling against all I had ever been taught about right
and wrong. I smoked, drank, experimented with drugs, bought into the idea
of ‘sexual freedom.’ Once in a while, I even lied. I rarely thought about
God except as a childhood idea. I was much too busy trying to
figure out who I was and what life was about to spend time on something as
archaic as God. Especially one as violent and capricious as the one who
was friends with my father.
Fast forward twenty-five
years. My second marriage of twenty years and three children is stumbling
toward collapse. By this time I have been living in my hometown only a
few miles from my parents during my entire second marriage. The uneasy
truce we have achieved is easily destroyed by the sudden upheaval of another
divorce.
My father was not at his best during this time. While
he didn’t rage violently any more, and hadn’t for years, he had settled into a
narcissistic rut where everything revolved around him. If it didn’t, it
just wasn’t all that important. At this point in my life, I hit what felt like
bottom. I was bereft with no foundation, no hope, nothing.
This was when I began writing angry letters to my father. “I don’t know
if I’ll ever be able to forgive you for this,” said one. “This is just
another example of your ego feeding on everything around it,” said another.
I began to see a counselor.
Kathryn was not your warm and fuzzy therapist; in fact she seemed somewhat
stern at times. This was good in a way because my old fear of lying came
back and I was able to tell the truth about my life in little spurts. I
worked slowly toward untangling the web of fear surrounding me and
understanding myself in relationship with other people, including my
parents.
During one session when I had been
particularly vitriolic regarding my father, Kathryn gave me some advice.
“It might be helpful,” she said, “to view your father as perhaps a pet
turtle. He’s there in your life, you’re not going to get rid of
him. You may even pat him on the head once in a while. But you don’t
get too excited over whether he goes in his shell or comes out, whether he
hibernates or wakes up. He’s just a turtle.” This
was not a magic solution to the complicated relationship with my father, but it
helped. I was able to look at my father more objectively and to see him more as
a wounded man than a fearsome demi-god.
At the same time, I began to
consider my spiritual life. For years I had countered any serious
questioning about where I stood with God by casually stating I was finding my
path. That was my entire spiritual life: finding my path. With the
upheaval I was experiencing, I realized there was no path; I was essentially
going in circles, going nowhere, believing in not much of anything.
Unexpectedly, I found myself yearning to find the path and walk it, or crawl it
if necessary. The only thing was, I had this little problem with
God. The part where I was full of anger and fear. Churches of my youth
had reinforced the fears my father encouraged, and I had no way to deal with
the anger. I felt paralyzed, unable to reach out for what I needed.
My journey was slow at first, as if
I were walking along a beach, looking at the water, staying just far enough
away from the tide to avoid getting my shoes wet. Eventually I took my shoes
off and let the water cover my feet. It was only a matter of time until I
was wading slowly away from the shore, getting ready to dive, to explore the
mysteries. I couldn’t swim and had no idea where I was going, but I was
beginning to believe God would give me what I needed to find my way.
I had been raised to believe any
church outside a narrow range of evangelical groups was suspect at
best. So, of course, I was drawn to a small Episcopal church called St.
Alban’s in a nearby town. I attended one Sunday and was relieved at the
predictability of the service. I found The Book of Common Prayer
in the back of the pew in front of me, and it took little effort to find my
place and follow along. I loved how different this was from the churches
of my youth, yet I didn’t go back to visit. Not until a few months later
when one day I was feeling particularly raw and un-tethered and saw a short
notice on the religion page of the newspaper announcing a healing service at
St. Alban’s each Saturday afternoon during Lent.
I arrived early at the service,
slipping into a back pew and onto the kneeler. As I knelt I meditated on the
stained glass window at the very top of the front of the church. After
several minutes, the rector walked to the front of the church and began arranging
his vestments. Realizing I was the only other person in the church, I
began to panic. Would I be called out, made a spectacle of, have hands
laid on me? I tried to look pious but I was secretly trying to find a way
to leave unobtrusively. I didn’t find it.
Father Eric turned to face me, and acknowledged no one else
was there except the organist up in the loft who came down and sat in a pew on
the other side of the church. And so the service began. I don’t
remember the words said or prayed that day, but I do remember it took only a
few minutes before I began to weep
By the time Father Eric called us
to the front of the church for communion, I had lost my self-consciousness and
stood quietly as Father Eric dipped his thumb in oil and made the sign of the
cross on my forehead, praying for my healing as I continued to weep.
I have seen and heard many
conversion stories, seldom one as un-dramatic as mine. But at that moment, the
depth of my pain led to a place of surrender to a God who is nothing like my
father, an imperfect man who loved me imperfectly and hurt me terribly.
In that surrender, it really was like a veil being lifted or utter blindness
giving way to sight as I experienced a love I had never imagined. One that required nothing of me but acceptance.
I’ve
wondered since then why God gave me such a terrible earthly father. It
seems not only unfair, but wasteful for me to struggle with the emotional and
psychological burdens Dad passed on to me. I could have been so much more
spiritually advanced by now, could have accomplished so many more things, could
have had a real father instead of a turtle.
A few years ago, Dad died after a
brief illness. Right up until the last time I saw him he remained cranky
and self-centered. I patted his bald head that was beginning to make him
look remarkably like that of a turtle, and tried not to take offense at his
remarks. He was my father; he was who he was. About a week
after his death, I began to miss him. Something would happen that would
cause me to think, “I’ll have to tell Dad about that.” And then I would
realize I couldn’t tell Dad. He was gone.
A while later at the
prison where I volunteered, one of the men, Tom, was talking about a part of
the Bible we were studying. I don’t remember what he said. What I
remember is what a joy it was to listen to him talk about his faith and God’s
meaning in his life. I imagined how Dad would enjoy talking to these men, and
then just as suddenly I remembered Dad was gone. But in the next instant
I had another thought: someday Dad would be able to sit with Tom and the
others, and we could talk in freedom as long as we wanted about whatever we
wanted. In that perfect day, Dad will have lost his self-centeredness and
be able to listen. Joy gave way to shock as I realized I look forward to
that day with anticipation, no longer burdened by the fears of my
childhood. Yes, I could have had a better father, one who taught me
from the beginning what it meant to be loved, to be in relationship, to be
valued. But rather than sit by bitter waters and weep, I can drink deeply
of sweet, living waters and thank God who says, “I am the Lord who heals you.”
I see heaven differently now than I
did when I was young. There’s a song called “Dancing with my Father God
in Fields of Grace.” After all the years of fear, anger, dysfunction and
enmity, I think of Dad whenever I hear this song. I envision a vast field
of barley, like the ones on Perrydale Road near the prison, with a few big
leafy trees providing shade. Out in the field God and Dad are dancing
joyously, unselfconsciously, with abandon. And there, at the edge
of the field, I stand waiting. Waiting for the moment when I run to join
them and begin to dance.
