The First Stone (Day 2 from Cleaning Thoughts)

   It was my parents who had taken me to the hospital that day, and I remember the nurse telling me how nervous my dad was. Though he denied it, the evidence told otherwise; she told me he was reading a magazine upside down. I smiled as I remembered the joy I saw on his face when I told him he had a grandson. This was the man who had raised me after my father died, and though he was my stepfather, he was the only dad I had ever known and had filled the role of grandfather to my son for over thirty years. At the time I was writing this story, this was to be my dad’s last Christmas with, he was dying of cancer. How was I going to tell him his grandson was not coming to spend the holidays with our family?

   A lot has happened over the past thirty years, and I don’t understand why the Lord chose to bring all this pain back into my life. Is this yet another step in the healing process I believed to be complete? It was easy to feel in my heart that I had given the Lord every area of my life when I wasn’t confronted with the present reality. Words from Jib 3:25-26 (NKJV) echoed back to me like brass cymbals, “Fir the things I greatly has come upon me. And what I dreaded has happened to me. I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest, for trouble comes.” Sitting alone and feeling very afraid of losing my son, the Lord reminded me that when I gave Him my past, I has also given Him permission to use it.

   This was the first Christmas without my son; he had chosen to spend it with his father. It wasn’t that I was against the relationship; I had encountered it for I knew what it was like to grow up without having mine in my life, because he had died when I was three years old, and if at all possible, I didn’t want that for my son. But tonight I was feeling replaced, abandoned, and betrayed. I felt as if I was losing him to his new family. This man who had walked out of our lives, never looking back and had rejected every attempt to see his son, was suddenly the center oh his attention, and I was angry. Everything I had tried to do was misunderstood and twisted to mean things I never meant for it to. The only word I had received from his father stated I was never to contact him again. I has also learned from my son the only explanation his father had offered to his leaving was, “Have you ever been young and stupid?” After all those years, I still found myself with questions. “ Was the stupidity in marrying me or leaving his wife and unborn child?” I felt as if I had been left to carry the burden of responsibility all over again. My heart was breaking, and nothing could bring me comfort!