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Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Parents of earth and Heaven

I have a very hard time understanding God as the loving, caring Father that scripture describes.  Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that He is not just that, He's proved it over and over again in my own peculiar life, rather, the incomprehension is on my side.  I haven't the foggiest how a human parent is supposed to treat their child, even though I am a parent myself, I have never been someone's little girl.  What my son takes for granted every single day, I never had and I have a very hard time understanding the concept in relation to myself, even though God has been a loving, caring Father countless times over in my own starved life, I still can't understand that when He says His blessings are for all His children, that somehow includes me, and they have been, but I still don't get it!  I bless my son without thinking, it is just so natural and right and good, but the very idea that anyone, most especially God, would bless me, is just incomprehensible sometimes.

That's what I struggle with: that I can be blessed, not because I deserve it, but because He delights to do so.  I suppose it goes back to my struggles with my own worth (nothing) and identity (an annoyance and burden) as a child whose parents had their own issues and interests and didn't really want to be bothered with me, which made me think I wasn't worth bothering about, except maybe as the recipient of their own frustration and anger.  I came to understand that any parental attention was a thing to be avoided at all costs.  While certain of my siblings got gifts and praise and attention, I was singled out for abuse and criticism and even things like socks were given only reluctantly.  If that's what my earthly parents are like, what am I to think of this so-called Heavenly Father?

But then I run across articles like this, and I cry and know that He loves all His children, even me!  It takes a bit of hubris to think that God can save everyone but me, that of all people, my sins alone are unforgivable, that He'd somehow leave me out of the divine inheritance when every other child of His is included, as if this perfect, Heavenly Father could be anything like my fallible and broken earthly parents.  I need an eternal perspective, in this, as in all things.  I need my Dad to put a band-aid on it, but He can do so much better than that, He can heal it (and me) fully!  Now there's a gift indeed.

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