Almost a new year...............

Life has changed a bit, again............

I am now an orphan.......Daddy died on 06/23/2017, two days before my birthday.

A couple of really good things came out of this...
         
       We had, at best, a contentious relationship for some of my life...he and Ma divorced when I was a very small girl.  I didn't see him again for about 5 years, then only for a few days. 

Then, when I was 16, he sent a plane ticket.  He wanted to get to "know me," he said.

What happened for the next two years is better left unsaid...........and I left his home when I was 18.  I didn't see him again for many years, and that meeting was an epiphany for me.

The years had not been kind to him.  He was an old man, and finally able to understand the hardship I endured for my whole life...........you see, he was now deafer than me.........

God had seen fit to bless him in ways that brought home to him all the sin that was in his life for his whole life.

I was finally able to tell my story in a place that it mattered.  And I finally understood that the fear and the ugliness was at an end for me.  He was no longer 20 feet tall and bulletproof..........

I felt like the weight of the world was gone.  Finally.

The other really good thing that occurred during this season in my life was that I was able to renew a relationship that I thought was gone forever.................the tenuous one that I had started those many years ago with his wife.  She did all she could to love me, and protect me.  In some ways, I must have blamed part of the events on her, when in reality, she was as much a victim as I was.

Anyway, we've renewed that relationship, and it is much stronger now.  She is a lovely woman, with a lovely heart and soul.

She's given me glimpses into the life of the man who was my father, and in some ways, made him more human to me.  He had hopes, dreams, fears, and losses along the way, too.

I've forgiven all of us, and am more than ready to move to new seasons...........

Love, loss, hope, dreams, renewals, cleansing............

All is well with my soul.