the whole StepDad thing

So my step dad’s a jerk.  I mean, I know that in literature and fairy tales it’s usually the wicked step mother, but my step mother’s great.  We’re very different from each other and didn’t get a lot of time together while I was growing up, which kept us from being close until the past several years.  But she’s really cool.  Everyone loves her.  I do, too.  But that step dad of mine, jeez oh peas.  I don’t know one single person who’s more stubborn, has to be right, judgmental, prejudiced, or is more selfish.  He drinks to make Vietnam go away, and the alcohol only makes it worse.  You’d think he’d know that after 35+ years.  He doesn’t treat my mom like the self-sacrificing, bright, funny, smart woman she is, and I never remember him having said I love you.  I wouldn’t have believed him anyway, considering the whole “actions speak louder than words” thing.  His daughter is an interior designer, his son in construction (like him).  They’re regarded in his mind (and I gather this from his words over the years) as the perfect offspring:  successful in business, tall and slender, independent.  They’re both also twice divorced, unhappy, and don’t call or visit ever.  But those are the things that apparently DON’T matter.  So you can see why there’s a bit of a difference in the way he sees Jesse and me.  If that’s how he judges success, then we are massive failures, and I wouldn’t change that for anything.

 

Anyway, all that’s not meant as a rant.  It’s meant as background.

 

I used to say that I prayed for my step dad, David, all the time.  I used to pray for him, until I got old enough for the hurt and confusion to turn to bitterness and hatred.  Even now, I can’t believe I’m admitting actually hating another being.  But if you lust and then divert your eyes, you’ve still lusted.  If you kill and then immediately repent, you’ve still taken a life.  So if hate and anger and ill will rises up in me in an instant and then I remind myself “you can’t hate.  Look at the grace you’ve been given.  You can’t withhold it from anyone,” then still the sin’s been committed.  So yes, I’ve hated him on and off for a long time.

 

So once the bitterness set in, somewhere around junior high, but for sure by high school, I all but stopped praying for him.  When I DID pray for him, I prayed for his salvation.  I know this is what we’re instructed to do, but it was wrong the way I did it.  I didn’t pray for mercy for him.  I didn’t pray for forgiveness or grace.  I prayed for a radical conversion, out of self interest, not genuine interest or Christian anything.  Do you have any idea how much easier my life would’ve been had David been changed in an instant?  Had he only collapsed onto his knees, appalled by the man he’d become, ashamed of the way he’d denied the Christ, I could’ve and would’ve praised Jesus til the Tennessee cows came home! 

 

But does God hear prayers that are self-seeking, especially salvation prayers?  What a farce!  What a lie!  Gaw, I was being so many things I hate about David, by praying for him?  Crazy.

 

Anyway, God really started working on me (or better, I finally allowed Him to begin working on me) a few months back about actually forgiving my step father.  Everyone knows the verses about God not forgiving those who don’t forgive or loving because He first loved us.  I know those verses, but it’s so easy to quickly acknowledge and bury again the things that really hurt, the things that run deep and are so much associated with how we view ourselves.  I’m not sure what I’m going to do without the bitterness I carry toward David.  Who will that person be?  Surely better.  More like Jesus, I know.

 

But I finally decided that I can’t do this anymore.  He may never change.  He might not ever give his heart to the Lord, which I don’t want to be the result, but have to face as a possibility.  All that leaves is the way I handle this hurt, the hurt of 20 years now.  I can’t be someone who doesn’t forgive.  I can’t be that enemy of the Lord.  I’ve never been someone who wonders “what do I have to do to get into Heaven.”  I know enough of God to know that HE is our reward, and my goal, when I’m at my best, is to be closer to Him.  But what if I died, got all the way through this life thinking I’d loved Him the best I could, and He said “who are you?  all I see is this unforgiveness, and if you knew Me at all, you’d have let go of this.  Please leave, I don’t know you.”  That is just a tragedy.  That’s the worst, most heart breaking thing I can imagine, for the One I love, the One I prostrate myself before and yell at and beg and worship, for that One to not even recognize me.  I can’t do it.  I cannot allow that to be a possibility.  Even now, I ask the Lord again, help me forgive.  I need You.

 

::breathe::

 

So, a few months ago, I dug out a picture of my step father and mom.  I’ve always secretly wanted to crop those pictures and put only my mom’s smiling face up.  To be honest, the one I have up at work is still half covered, to keep him hidden and her showing.  But I dug this picture out and put it on the mirror on my bathroom door.  Since then, every time I notice this picture, I ask God to please help me forgive him.  I don’t have the slightest clue how to go about this.  I don’t FEEL forgiveness having come or even on the horizon.  When I start to think good thoughts, my memories betray me, and I’m back in the dark where I began. 

 

But God is always good.  I’m asking from a genuine heart.  I’m laying out my genuine need for Him to come and save me, because I can’t save myself.  Again and again, I can’t save my friggin self. 

 

“our whole being by its very nature is one vast need; incomplete, preparatory, empty yet cluttered.  Crying out for Him who can untie things that are now knotted together and tie up things that are still dangling loose.” –C.S.Lewis

 

C.S. Lewis also made a reference in the Screwtape Letters to Christians being like little children learning to walk and how God is pleased when we fall if only the will to walk is there.

 

I know God is doing something.  I’m writing this for everyone to see aren’t I?  I can feel Him changing my perspective without my understanding how. 

 

I’m finally praying for David’s salvation because I desire the pain to stop in his life.  For him.  Not for me.  I desire his salvation because I desire my Savior’s pain to stop, the longing and the ever-beckoning that’s so far gone unreciprocated. 

 

It’s beautiful, this pain in me.  I feel changing.  I feel softening.  I feel remorse and hope and spilling out.

 

Do the same.  If you’re reading this, do the same.  It hurts, but it frees, and I FEEL my heart coming closer to Jesus’.  It’s the only place to be for a believer.  It’s the only place you’re alive.  Be alive and let go.