Uninvited was a special book for me the first year that I lived out in Washington D.C.
It was a scary first year. I had never lived on my own. I didn't know how to pay bills, and yet there I was at 26 trying to find an apartment and a car, navigate a new job and all the benefits and pitfalls that come with it.
On my way out of town, a dear friend and the mother of one of the people instrumental in the shaping of my faith, gave me Lysa TerKeurst's book. I've perused her blog and it's very inspirational.
But it was this book that woke me up to how truly unusual my childhood was.
In the middle of reading this book--actually to be fair it was in the first few chapters--TerKeurst reveals that her father abandoning her had terrible, serious repercussions on her self-worth, her identity, and her relationships and expectations with men that she dated before she married her husband.
It was a resounding blow to the things I myself had experienced.
There was this tiny, shocked voice that said My father abandoned me.
At the time I had no idea where that thought came from. I was horrified. How...how was that even possible that I could feel that way about my dad? He had never hit me. He had always been there for me.
But I realized that even though my father had been there physically to care for me as a small child, that didn't mean he fulfilled his role as my parent very well as he got older.
Him being there doesn't mean he was a good role-model of what a father or man should look like.
Him being there doesn't mean he taught me how a man should treat a woman.
Him being there doesn't mean he wasn't abusive verbally, emotionally neglectful, invalidating, dismissive, selfish, guilt-tripping, or blaming.
Him being there doesn't mean he is excused for being controlling or overbearing.
Him being there doesn't mean he is excused for taking out his anger on me, for manipulating me and using reverse psychology and control tactics to conform me into doing his will.
Over the course of the next year, from August 2016 to July 2017, I slowly started to chew on what I had read in her book.
The rest of the book is beautiful by the way, and talks about how God sets us "Apart" to live fully and beautifully in Him, with Him, through Him.
But the thought that I had been abandoned, and I think more honestly, that I had been betrayed, could not leave my mind. I was sitting at work one day, struggling through our mailings when it suddenly dawned on me how much I hated my father.
I hated him.
I hated and despised him in all the senses of those two words as fully as one can feel them.
For every time he threatened to leave my mother and me if we didn't behave. He would pull out that threat like a belt and bellow at the top of his lungs that he would leave and we would never see him again. It came out in every argument. Every. Single. Time. And their arguments, legendary screaming matches that terrified me, were frequent. After enough time and experience with it, it tuned it out and became numb to the level of their voices, rolling my eyes, or in other instances, jumping in to defend my mother or provoking one or both, depending on how angry I was at them. Usually I was bellowed at to stay out of it. At earlier ages, I would cry and become upset at the fighting, only to have my father yell at me for crying--why was I crying? He wasn't yelling at me. Or he would take it out on my mom and I for her enabling my selfish behavior. The situation is too complex to fully understand and each memory is a network of pain, frustration, and anger is deeper levels than I sometimes comprehend.
It is not a wonder to me that I have a deep-seated fear of being abandoned. It is not a wonder that every guy I go out with, there is always a suspicion and fear that he will become bored with me, that he will not stay. That I cannot make him stay. That I am not good enough or interesting enough for him to love me. For him to love me enough as I am, good and bad, to want to stick around.
TerKeurst's book was only one part of a long and painful process. But it made me realize that I had been abandoned, through fear, psychological manipulation and control, and threats, by the one man in my life who should have been my protector.
That was seven months ago. Today I am ambivalent in my feelings toward him. Occasionally there is a fondness for the fun and loving things he did do, particularly when I was a very little girl. But there is no familial love. There is no affection. There is only emptiness and numbness. I have done my best in seven months to heal those wounds, by recognizing them, the root that caused them. But I will never be really healed all on my own; that's God's job. In God, I seek truth to fill the cavities left clean from the hard scraping I've done with the tools of revelation and understanding.
I am not as hollow as I used to be, but I am still not full.
The process of learning to fill your own bucket rather than waiting for others to fill it for you, or demanding they do, will never satisfy you or make you whole. The process and growth is hard; it is deeply painful. But the purpose of growth is to become. I just wish I knew what it is I am meant to be.
