Loving Yourself Enough To Let Go
In lieu of Father's Day just passing, today's blog is about relationships with fathers. Sure I can go on a long speech about how wonderful fathers are, and how every little girl should marry a man like her father, and every little boy should mimic his father, and so on. But let's face the cold hard truth, it is not always like that for everyone! Every little boy and little girl within us has memories of happy times, sad times, and bad times, some more than others, if at all, of moments with their father. That's life! We are none the same, every fingerprint is different just as every experience is.
"But let's face the cold hard truth, it is not always like that for everyone!"
I have always been a mommy's girl and my sister a daddy's girl. I remember fun times, sad times, and bad times, but the fun times far outweighed the bad and sad times for me. Most of the time, as a kid, I never acknowledged the sad moments in life. Like when my dad lost his job, which caused us to lose our home. But we were never ever homeless. We moved around a bit, but my dad always found a way, a legal way, to provide for us and my mom. So because of the love my parents provided, it smothered out any room for sadness. However, as I approached my teenage years my dad and I had our moments of butting heads. We are similar in some ways and it is those similarities that caused a strain on our relationship.
"We are similar in some ways and it is those similarities that caused a strain and a rip in our relationship."
This went on for a few years, until I became a senior in high school and wanted a change in my life. Trust me, I was not without blame in our arguments, nor was he, but I grew tired of being angry, hurt, and sad. I wrote out my feelings a lot to relieve myself of the pressure I felt that caused me to have explosive anger and depressed. This also helped me not to become so annoyed when I felt like I was being provoked. But more importantly I sought out God for help and guidance through prayer. Be careful what you ask for, because He showed me my own reflection in a dream. All the bitterness, anger, sadness, rage I had built up over the years were stored and stacked neatly in tupperware bowls lined up in a huge refrigerator...even in the freezer area. I woke up, not in denial about what was revealed to me, but I woke up fully aware of what was shown to me and what it meant. I knew then what I had to do...forgive and let it go, and so I did. It definitely was not an overnight process. It takes time, it takes patience, and it takes a whole lot of compromising. You have to get out of your feelings and understand that this cleansing is not about them, but it has everything to do with you, and where you are going, and where you want to be. You have to love you more! Love yourself enough to not let anyone deter you from becoming the best version of yourself you can be.
"Trust me, I was not without blame in our arguments, nor was he, but I grew tired of being angry, hurt, and sad."
Needless to say, my father and I have a much better relationship than before. I love him, he's the only dad I have and have ever known. Life is not perfect, it was never meant to be. We still have our moments where we don't see eye to eye, but I do not allow my feelings to interfere with my blessings, my progress, and the time I have left with my dad on this earth. Anything can happen to him or me. I like to make sure my plate is clean, knowing I did my part in life making things right, and not having any regrets I would have to live with later.
"We still have our moments... but I do not allow my feelings to interfere with my blessings, my progress, and the time I have left with him on this earth."
This Father's Day message is about loving yourself enough to love others, forgiving those who have wronged you, letting go and letting memories be a thing of the past and not a constant everyday torment and burden, living true happiness regardless of what has happened to you, and moving forward in life knowing you can not change people and that's ok because you can change for yourself.
"...you can not change people and that's ok because you can change for yourself."
xo,
M&C
