Two years ago today, my dad signed a new will disinheriting me and my four children. And then two weeks later, he died without ever telling me what he had done, or why. With one stroke his a pen, he excised us from his life as a surgeon removes a cancerous growth.
But we weren't cancer: I was his first-born child and three of my four children were his first grandchildren. I doubt I will ever know - this side of heaven - exactly what happened, but even if I did, it wouldn't matter anyway.
Because this is not about the spirit of rejection which gripped my soul for several months, or the buckets of tears shed. It's not even about the financial provision that was stolen from me during a time I was living in Israel as a volunteer, where every shekel was precious, and would have allowed me to bless my son with the help he desperately needed at the time.
Today I'm focusing on the amazing truth which sprang from this seeming tragedy: For when my earthly father cut me out of his family and made me an orphan, the Creator of the universe stepped in, scooped me up in His arms, and placed me securely in His. The past twenty-two months have been a journey: Seeing myself and my life from a new, eternal perspective, learning what it means to be wanted and deeply loved, discovering new parallels/contrasts between life with my earthly dad and ABUNDANT LIFE with my Abba.
Since childhood, I've been a believer in Jesus. But it required my dad to step aside and release me from his grip for me to truly see my position as a child of my Heavenly Father. I look back now and realize how I always viewed the Lord through a filter - colored by my own experiences and interactions with my dad. With the filter removed, this new view of who He is, and who I am in Him, is spectacular and astonishing!
I love my dad. I always have. I longed for his acceptance, for him to look in my eyes and just once to really see me. But he was so bound by the wounds and bitterness of his own childhood. Strong cords of abandonment, betrayal, parental abuse and chaos ensnared his heart, his mind, his soul, gripping and blinding him. Cords from which he never managed to break free.
In some ways, my dad was more of a prisoner to his past than I ever was. The sins of my grandfather spewed out of his life, poisoned his five children and, through my dad, indelibly etched bitter fruit and mistrust on the walls of my childhood home.
After my mom died in June 2015, and we saw dad's growing dementia and bouts with confusion, I delayed my move to Israel and went to care for him in the home he and my mom had shared. Those first weeks were rough. My mom's passing triggered for my dad the wounds of rejection he'd always carried, and this felt like the ultimate abandonment. Although my mom valiantly fought her battle with stomach cancer and deeply desired to live, all my dad could see what that she, too, had left him in the end.
As we began to "unpack" dad's grief, his unresolved childhood haunted him more and more. Bitterness and unforgiveness would well up and wrap around him.
Precious memories of our conversations return to me now. Opportunities to speak to him of the beauty of forgiveness and letting go; release your hurts, dad, place them into the hands of the Father and allow yourself to heal. He was once again that frail child, weeping profusely, eyes wide with the pain of it all, gripping my hand in his.
"It's too hard," he would say. "You can't possibly understand." I would almost laugh at the irony.
"Dad, I am the daughter you don't like. I'm the one you don't trust." I was speaking softly to a frightened little boy. "And yet here I am, the one caring for you, cooking for you, holding you when you cry over mom. How do you think I do this?" "It's just you and me here. We can be honest. You know the pain of my childhood. You, of all people, know what I've had to forgive. And yet, I have forgiven you." "Look in my eyes. What do you see there? Compassion, tenderness and love. I understand where you are: I have lived it, and I'm your living testimony that what is impossible with man is absolutely possible with God."
It was a rough road to get here, granted. But while I didn't inherit money, I also didn't inherit the generational curses, family baggage, or blood oaths spoken by my grandfather. Those cords that ensnared my dad, from which he could never break free... they have NO hold over me. I have a legal document I can wave in the face of every enemy and say, "You have no claim to me or my children. Go look somewhere else."
And so, two years ago today, just days before Christmas and a week before my birthday, my dad gave me the most beautiful, precious gift ever: Freedom. Deep, profound, and everlasting. A clean slate, a fresh page for the Eternal I AM to write my new story. One of His purposes and plans for me which He designed and set in motion before I took my first breath.
For He is my inheritance, my shield and my very great reward. This is a story that has only just begun! Stay tuned for more...
[If I could have had one last conversation with my dad, it would have gone something like this: "Thank you, dad! I love you - you would have absolutely LOVED Israel :-) I think of you often and wish you could see what I see, especially when I'm discovering a new 'treasure' here in the land. Thank you for making it possible for me to be here."]
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