There was a ring that I’d worn since high school on my left ring finger. It was special. My daddy had given that ring to me in honor of a promise that I’d made to remain pure for my future husband. The night the man took that purity away forcibly, I threw the ring in the bottom of my jewelry box, wanting to never see it again. It was a painful reminder that I had broken a promise. I had to lie to my dad and tell him that I lost the ring in the jumble of working three different jobs. I am fairly certain that he knew the truth, but he never asked any questions. I hated lying to him but that was easier than facing up to the reaction that would have come from just telling him the truth. I couldn’t have dealt with the look of disappointment that would have been on his face if he knew the truth. In some ways, I guess I was scared that he wouldn’t love in the same way. My dad’s approval was important. It was important that he was pleased with me and the things that I did. Instead, I threw myself into work.
I was searching for a place to belong where there was no pressure to fit into a set of societal standards. I wasn’t pretty enough for the campus sororities. I wasn’t smart enough for the academic societies. I wasn’t a talented enough musician to make my dreams of being a music teacher come true. I didn’t fit in at the church that I was attending at the time. I began to believe the voice that said I was dirty, filthy, unlovable, shameful, a disappointment to my family. Those words pierced my inner being and stuck. I couldn’t trust people around me. They wouldn’t understand. They would judge and I didn’t need their condemnation on top of what I was already heaping on myself. I truly began to believe that the nagging voice that said these things was speaking the truth. I’d broken the promise. That’s what it all boiled down to. I was to blame and until I could forgive myself nothing was going to change.
You know to be perfectly honest; I have never considered myself a pretty person. Not really pretty. Of course the images and ideas of what makes someone pretty in my head were far from the reality of the matter. I know that I don’t fit into that Barbie, super model mold of what society finds to be the image of beauty and perfection. Weight has been a struggle for as long as I can remember. It never failed that every summer, I vowed to eat healthier, lose weight, and look better. I started out great. I stuck to the diet and workout regimen. And then one day, the images from the night of the rape, the sights, sounds, and smells begin to flash through my mind. Conversations replayed. Attention from people would come noting the change in my appearance and how pretty I was starting to look. I couldn’t handle it. I didn’t want that kind of attention and I would decide then and there that I didn’t want to be pretty. It wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t worth the risk of attracting another man that would treat me the same way as the one before had. Keeping a distance from people was the only safety that I could find. Looking the way that I do doesn’t attract the wrong kind of attention from men. There was safety in that knowledge. There for I stay the same, hating the fact that I am single and alone but comfortable knowing that it keeps me “safe”. This is such a messed up way of thinking. It almost sounds self-destructive. It’s become my normal mode of thinking and it MUST change.
I am a lot more broken than I originally wanted to admit. Today is the day that I am saying enough is enough. My righteousness isn’t dependent upon anything I did or didn’t do. It comes from Jesus who paid the price for my sins and sent the fullness of the blessings from the throne room of God to me. I can’t believe this statement and listen to the accusing voice of the Enemy. Today I declare, Satan you have no more right to accuse or torment me about this rape. It was not my fault nor did I ask for it to happen. You no longer have the right to accuse or harass because I am choosing to stand in my authority as a Christian and rebuke this wrong way of thinking. I am cherished. I am precious. I am loved. Most of all I am forgiven and therefore you have no right to stand.
Healing is an interesting thing. It doesn’t come in the way that you think it is going to all of the time. We pray for healing at the drop of a hat. Someone asks you to pray for them or someone they know who is sick or hurt or whatever. You pray. Did you stop to think about what you are praying? Does healing always come in the form of the physical removal of an illness or injury? I can attest to the fact that it does not. The next part of my journey through healing begins with my daddy. Probably from the day I was born, I was a daddy’s girl. The song by Red Sovine called Daddy’s Girl probably sums it up just about right. The song describes a dad and daughter who do EVERYTHING together. That was us. You didn’t see my dad without seeing me trailing behind. We were fishing buddies, even though I had the attention span of a goldfish for fishing. It didn’t matter. We were spending time together. My dad was my biggest fan and at times my harshest critic. It didn’t matter. He was paying attention to me and that was all I wanted. I wanted him to notice that I was being good or was good at something. There is just something special to a little girl about attention from her father. It makes her feel cherished, special, loved. It is important in developing her character where a husband in concerned. She learns about dating and the ways that a woman should be treated. The need to be noticed became that much stronger when he separated from my mother and began a relationship with another woman. It wasn’t easy seeing his attention that had been just for me was devoted to another woman’s children. I worked harder, smiled more, and tried to do everything better. It wasn’t enough. I was seen as spoiled and ungrateful because I had grandparents that lovingly took me in when no one else wanted me. I had everything I needed in their house except the one thing that I wanted… my dad. It almost seemed like he belonged to the other family. That’s how it felt to me at least. I felt abandoned and alone. I wasn’t accustomed to feeling this way. It had always been me and Dad. This other woman felt like an intruder into something special. I made attempts to like her because it was the only way to still get time with my dad. Over time, things became different. Dad settled into a life with her and her children, and it wasn’t long before there was another child being born. Things most certainly changed after that. I was torn between wanting to live in the stability of my grandparents’ house and wanting to live in the crazy new normal at my dad’s house. Nothing made sense anymore. I poured myself into schoolwork and getting better grades. I was focused on being the perfect child and perfect student so that dad would notice and bring some of that attention back to me where I felt it belonged to begin with. I thrived in this random chaos. It was the perfect outlet for a perfectionist attention seeking child. It was sometime when I was in junior high that Dad began to have heart problems. He had several angioplasties over the years to open blocked arteries. It was when I was in college that he finally had to have quadruple bypass surgery. After many days in the ICU on a ventilator, things began to turn around for the better. Diets changed for short term periods. It was a strange cycle of doctor visits, hospitalizations, and attempted life style changes. He had a defibrillator/pacemaker installed in his chest which helped temporarily, but eventually more needed to be done. Finally Dr. Leatherman suggested that he visit with Dr. Hall at Baylor Medical Center in Dallas. There was talk of a heart transplant, medications, and a wide variety of other options. It was during this time that I remember beginning to pray for miraculous healing. My deepest desire was for God to heal his heart and give him the testimony to proclaim to the world. He was hospitalized in Dallas in August right before my second year of teaching was to begin. I would love to say that my focus was wholly on him, but it wasn’t. I had a job to do and very little time to prepare to do it. I knew it was direly important for me to be the best I could be at this job, but it was also direly important for me to focus on my time with him. I had no idea at that time how important it would be. Dr. Hall determined that the best course of action for Dad was to put him at the bottom of the transplant list, install a PICC line, and start him on a course of medication touted to improve the quality of your life but possibly shorten the quantity. It seemed like the solution we were all searching for. In fact there was a time that daddy got a phone call to get to the hospital ASAP because he was number two on the transplant list and if the heart wasn’t right for the number one candidate and It was for him he would get the heart. There was more than one occasion that we were at the hospital for doctors visits and we would see the doctor with the cooler that said heart on it. It was a strange assurance that there was hope on this new leg of the journey. Around the beginning of November, the decision was made to send dad to the hospital to stay until he got a new heart. It was the only way to ensure that he stayed at the top of the transplant list without his status having to be reviewed every two weeks. He moved into a room in the ICU and life took on a new normal. We talked on the phone every day and had regular visits on Saturdays. The nurses often commented about how he was the healthiest sick person on the floor. It was true. He was able to walk around the floor to keep up muscle strength. He began to work on watercolor pictures. His art was absolutely gorgeous. His talent was amazing. He played marathon games of scrabble and sorry with the nursing staff. He had conversations about pace maker replacements with one of his nurses. Things took a turn for the worse near the end of January. They had to implant a device to help circulate his blood because his heart just couldn’t do it anymore. Just before that surgery would be the last time I would talk to my father and have an actual conversation. The device did its job, but it was determined that Dad couldn’t wait any longer for a heart and the Jarvis mechanical heart was his best option. The only drawback is that having the mechanical heart implanted automatically sends you back to the bottom of the transplant list. The prognosis with the mechanical heart was good and most people decide to just live with the mechanical heart. The surgery was to take place on Monday February 1st. I took off of work and was prepared to sit through the hour’s long surgery knowing that the outcome would be fine. I had prayed for this healing and finally it seemed as though that was going to take place. On Saturday night, the hospital called and said that Dad had acquired an infection and his health was declining quickly. We found out that because of the infection and the fever he would not be able to have the operation on Monday. We gathered around the bed and watched as the nurses came in repeatedly to check vital signs or to stop some machine from beeping. We hadn’t been there long when both the nurse and Dr. Hall came in to talk to us. She told us that his time was short. His heart was showing signs of shutting down. His kidneys weren’t working and his liver was beginning to shut down. We talked with the chaplain and spent most of the time in tears. Everyone else left the room to go secure hotel rooms in the hospital hotel for the night. I stayed in the room. Dad and I had our final conversation. I told him how much I loved him and how much he meant to me. I had gotten a text message from a friend asking me to relay a message of thanks to him. I did and tears began to stream from his eyes. I knew he understood. It wasn’t very long before I found myself tearfully telling him that it was okay for him to go to Heaven. It was okay for him to let go. I said it, but in my heart I didn’t mean it. My champion. My hero. I was telling him it was okay to be gone from me for the rest of my life. That wasn’t really okay. I wanted him to be here forever. Who else was going to understand me? Who understood the absolute hilarity of Vivian and Victor? Who knew how to make Ken do pushups for hours? Who was going to be there when I got married? Who would be there when I was sad or happy or needed someone to just listen? Who knew the significance of I love you all my muches, Shucky, the blanket show, schwa, and all of the other millions of memories we had together? I felt like a part of my heart was dying with him. Healing came to my daddy that night in the ICU. It wasn’t in the form that I believed I had prayed for. I never prayed for him to die. I prayed for a new heart to come so that he could do the things he wanted to do. Daddy did get a new heart and a new body to go along with it. The heart that God chose to provide was far superior to any that I could have found for him here on Earth. It wasn’t fair. It had barely been a year since Momma died. Why me? Did I do something wrong to deserve to lose both of my parents? Was I strong enough to go through this again so soon? I had just learned how to deal without my mom at holidays. It was too much to expect for me to be able to function through family gatherings without some sadness. However that was what was expected. I was supposed to be the strong woman who had dealt with this once before already and knew all of the answers and how to deal with all of the emotions and stress. I’m not that woman. I wasn’t strong. I tried to make people think I was. I took one day off to deal with the grief and then had to get back to work and deal with everything there. It didn’t matter that I didn’t want to get out of bed much less face all of the people at work. It didn’t matter that I hurt and the hurt went so deep that I couldn’t bear it most of the time. Yet again, I slapped on that happy face and trudged along through it. The service was planned and things were set to be wonderful. It wasn’t going to be your traditional service, but that was how Daddy wanted it. I went to praise team practice and was ready to play through the songs that we had picked out. It didn’t hit me until I went to bed that night what I was getting ready to do. The family questions began and the criticism was sharp. I shouldn’t be up on that stage playing. It was shameful. It was not my place. My place was to be with the family grieving. Those of you, who truly know me, know that I love to play. It is a release. It allows for the expression of numerous emotions and stresses. I was grieving, but I had promised my daddy that I would play at his service. I don’t back down from my promises. It is just part of who I am. In spite of the criticism I knew what I had to do.
I am ever so thankful for friends that love me like I am a part of their own families. The night before the service, I had no idea the surprises that were in store for me. I had plans with my sweet friend Gayla to go shop for something new to wear to the service. We shopped and had plans to go eat Mexican food afterwards. On our way there, we were about to take a detour to Mardel when her phone rang. I was still blissfully out of the loop. We decided to go on to the restaurant. We walked into a very busy restaurant and I figured we would be there for quite a while waiting for a table. I was shocked when Gayla said that our table was ready. I tried to protest but was ushered around a staircase to a rather large table. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were nearly thirty people seated around a table waiting for me to arrive. I was speechless. Shocking I know. I was given a slight push and told to go hug everyone at the table. I wasn’t sure what was going on at that time and began to hug people. I was handed various sized envelopes and several gift bags. I finally made it to an empty chair and had to sit and try to process what was going on. It took several minutes for the fact that they had all come together as a surprise for me to sink in. I know I cried repeatedly as I opened and read cards with heartfelt wishes of sympathy and words of encouragement.
The next morning, tears threatened to begin to fall from my eyes from the moment I woke up. I vowed to remain strong through the service. I played with gusto. It was a true worship experience for me. I could feel the love in the room from the people that mattered the most to me. I could feel the condemnation from the people that didn’t understand or didn’t feel the way that they made it seem they did at the service. There was a different feeling about this service. It wasn’t the same as Mom’s. It was more joyful. I was sad, but this time it was different. I wasn’t as angry as before. I was more at peace. This new normal way of life didn’t seem to take as much getting used to as the one before. Maybe it was because I had been here before. I am not sure what made it different but I was glad that it was.
It wasn’t that long ago that I realized that I had been keeping a spot in my heart that belonged to God for my daddy. I had to let go and learn to allow God to fill those voids. They run deep. It has not been easy to give up that control and allow the healing to begin. In fact I am fairly certain that these wounds are being opened once again to allow the nasty infected parts to be cleansed with an antiseptic that can only be found in the loving arms of Papa God, my Abba Father. I am beginning to find the significance in these song lyrics. They bring me to tears every time I hear them.
Healing is in Your Hands
No mountain, no valley, no gain or loss we know
Could keep us from your love
No sickness, no secret, no chain is strong enough
To keep us from your love
How high? How wide?
No matter where I am, healing is in Your hands
Healing is coming. I can feel the balm of peace beginning to take the place of the pain and the sorrow. It doesn’t mean that I don’t still feel sad. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss both of my parents. There are days that I would give anything to have them back for even just a minute. It’s hard when I can’t remember what their voices sound like. It’s hard when I can’t remember what a hug feels like from them. It makes me long for the day when I will see them in Heaven and get to experience it for real once again. It also shouldn’t surprise me in the slightest that God has chosen to bless me with spiritual parents that love me like I am one of their own. My “new” parents are amazing. I will have to post about them soon. They play an important part in my new journey. I look forward to sharing it with them. For now though, I believe I have bared enough of my soul for one posting.
Until next time,
Melody
Love you!
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