Love Conquers All? Chapter 12

David had told me early on, that with all the changes I was embarking on in my life, I would need to immerse myself in God’s love for me to get through what was ahead. It was an unexpected side trip I had ventured into.  Despite the fact that I didn’t really want to explore the idea of God’s love for me (I seriously had come to believe that God did not love me, was disappointed in me, and at best, tolerated me - you know - because I was a mistake and all) nevertheless, I had started to listen to various speakers and was reading a wide variety of books, most notably, Blaise Pascal and Brennan Manning. All of them dared me to believe and trust in God’s love for me in a new and deep way. And in the same way that I found it so difficult to accept my dad’s love for me, I was equally hesitant to believe that God could or would love me completely. I had spent years steeling myself from hurt and rejection and I was so afraid to let down my guard. But I read an excerpt from Brennan Manning’s, Ragamuffin Gospel that stopped me in my tracks (frankly - there are innumerable passages in his books that have made me stop so I could absorb the radical faith he describes in his books but this one was particularly germane to my current situation).  

“We grow squeamish and skittish before Gods love...(we) bray, bridle and bolt at the revelation of Gods all-embracing love...I have encountered shocking resistance to the God whom the Bible defines as Love.”

That was me. Skittish. And resistant. Not just to God’s perfect love for me - but to that of my dad’s as well. I had wondered for months what was wrong with me that I could not accept this love that was being offered. Brennan Manning showed me that I was not unique in this resistance and that knowledge allowed me to relax a little. I did not plunge in with both feet, but I slowly, over the course of the next year, in increments, started to accept the love that was there.  I courageously started to trust it.   

Part of accepting that love was learning to rest in, and experience the special things that my dad and Norma did for me. I now knew they were not handing me gifts to buy my love or to make up for all those lost years. I knew they gave gifts because they loved to do so; it was part of who they were. So over the course of 2014 I would start the process of accepting what they were choosing to give. It was still unnerving for me, but I made a choice to start seeing it for what it was - genuine, growing love for me.  

What was working against this process was not just my daughters estrangement - but the ghosts in my head. Loud ones. I had grown up knowing I was a mistake. That might have been a core belief about myself which could have been reasonably overcome had I not spent the last 34 years in a marriage that shamed me and told me, in one way or another, that I was defective. When my marriage was ending, I called a girlfriend from high school that I was still in touch with. She had been the only one, all those years ago, who had told me I should not marry John. I asked her to dig into her memory to tell me why she had thought that. Her reply was succinct and amazingly accurate. It summed up what my marriage had been all about.  

“He was always trying to fix you and you didn’t need fixing”.  

Yes - that was it in a nutshell. Daily being told I was broken and needed fixing. If John’s words and actions toward me were fire, then my in-law's were the gasoline. For years I had been subjected to behaviour that was irredeemably unacceptable. You see - they seemed to think that my status as a bastard was not something that could be overcome. They seemed to think it disqualified me from being part of a family. And it was clear they felt my bastard status made me ineligible to receive even the most basic common courtesy or respect. I sum up my experience with my in-laws over the course of my marriage very glibly.  They hated me. They tortured me. Shamed me. Relentlessly. 

So the dominate voice in my head, as I struggled to integrate the idea and the reality that I now had a dad and a step-mom, half-sisters, a niece and nephews - a bonafide blood family - was that of my father-in-law. I replayed the times he told me, to my face, that I did not belong in a family. That I didn’t know how to belong in a family and that I never would. I didn’t replay those episodes willingly. Like a PTSD flashback, they would jump out to accuse me every time I would try and accept what was being given to me by my dad. Exacerbating the accusations being replayed in my head was the fact that I was estranged from my kids and could not seem to find a way to reconcile with them. It gave credence to my father-in laws accusations. I read another passage in a book that explained the effect of shame on a person.  

“When you suffer betrayal and shame - trust is the scariest thing ever. Being vulnerable opens you to attack, humiliation - unimaginable pain and destruction - people are met with suspicion and mistrust.”*  

This would be the struggle I would face in the coming year.  

It also started to dawn on me was that I had never been a daughter before. Or a sister. Or an aunt. I had no idea what was required of me. I didn’t know how to fulfill those roles and I was terrified of messing them up. And then I would see the snide self-satisfied look on my father-in-law’s face saying; 

“See, I told you you didn’t know how to be in a family”.  

The beginning of that year saw frequent visits with my dad and Karen as they made business trips to the city.  My dad and Norma also made a special trip in frigid temperatures to celebrate my birthday. But as the long winter started to  transition into spring, I was thinking about making some more changes in my life. Changes that didn’t make sense to a lot of people. I had been separated for more than a year and my divorce was scheduled, if John cooperated, to be final in June. After that, I would start a new life. I didn’t know what that new life would look like exactly but I did know one thing, I wanted my new life to be back on Vancouver Island.  I wanted to move home.
  

*(Try as I might, I cannot find the quote again to cite it's author...sorry! I will gladly credit the author as soon as I discover him/her)