The fatherless child

I can call him Lord, God, faithful one, saviour, creator, anything, except Father. I can’t call him that.

I never knew my father. He disappeared before I was born. I can only assume he didn't think I’d be good enough to make hanging around worthwhile.When you’ve never known a father, it’s hard to accept a father’s love. When all you have is an empty space how can you relate to one others call father?

All the parables, all the stories in the world, don’t make it real, can’t fill a void, make known the unknown. You can say, ‘Our father, who art in heaven,’ without feeling a word of it.

And yet.

Most of my life, I’ve lived a half life. But now, I is becoming me. I’m learning how to uncover the person I was created to be.

Through my words, written and read, I’m discovering who I am. My writing is an extension of me, it makes me wholeThrough it my thoughts are given shape and substance. I have something worth saying, something worth hearing.

Through my writing I can view myself as valuable, worthy, not because I write or because of what I write but, by its very being, my writing earths my existence. My words are as much part of me as my eyes or my toes. Before finding them, I was missing an element as vital to my well-being as calcium is to my bones.

Releasing them allows me to be me, wholly me.

And the key to that release has been meeting God, being accepted into his family.So I live in that new life, no longer a fatherless child. Instead one whose family has demonstrated a father’s love and allowed me to experiment, learn, develop and build confidence without fear of being knocked back.

I used to think that growing up without a father was my loss but maybe it was his.I still can’t call God Father but one day, when we meet, it’ll be the only word I’ll need.