Someone Check his ID

I haven’t blogged for a few days. Seems like whatever I had to say was not ripe yet. I will update the world on my progress.

My dad keeps improving. It’s astonishing. All of my life, I had to cope with the knowledge that I could not respect my father as much as I wanted to. I could honor him, but I could never look at him and be satisfied that he was doing what he should. That’s over now. He is a new person.

He is physically weak. He is in a wheelchair. He can’t remember things from one hour to the next. Nonetheless, he is as good a father as a man could ever want, and I am very, very grateful for him.

I tell him what a good father he is, and I mean it.

God used to tell me my dad would be saved, and I was happy about that, but I thought it would be a wrestling match right up to the end. I expected limited satisfaction. I figured he would lie on his deathbed and accept God out of fear, and that when he went, things between us would be unresolved. I expected to have to finish the work of resolution on my own. It hasn’t worked out that way. God has removed bitterness and resentment, and my dad and I are finally in unity.

How many people get this blessing? I know people who have forgiven their parents, and I know people whose relationships with difficult parents have been improved, but I don’t know anyone else who has been truly healed. It shows what is available to us, if we will persist in our relationships with God.

When I show up at the ALF where my dad lives, he is always thrilled to see me. He says one nice thing after another about me. He expresses complete confidence in me. He keeps saying he wants me to have everything he has. We haven’t had a harsh exchange in weeks.

Leaving the ALF used to be difficult because he would tell me how miserable it made him to see me go. Now he says he doesn’t want to keep me if I have things to do. What a difference that makes. He still expresses concern about how he’ll feel when I’m gone, but he isn’t manipulative.

Derek Prince teaches a lot about witchcraft, and he breaks it down into types. Some types involve calling on evil spirits, but one type isn’t overtly supernatural. If you exert excessive pressure on people to do your will, for selfish reasons, it’s a form of witchcraft.

I lived under this type of witchcraft all my life. When I was a kid, my dad ruled the house through fear. Later on, he used money. He broke down our ability to trust ourselves. He made us feel incompetent. He also coerced us to say he was right and we were wrong; maybe that was the worst thing he did.

Guilt trips are witchcraft. My dad used guilt to get obedience a great deal, even when it was clear that he was in the wrong.

My dad doesn’t manipulate me now. He doesn’t belittle me. He doesn’t try to worry me. He doesn’t attack my competence. He doesn’t try to make me feel guilty. He doesn’t try to intimidate me. He doesn’t threaten.

I feel the way I used to feel when he left for business trips. When I was a kid, we counted the days until he left, and while he was gone, we felt like we were on vacation. I feel that way now. My dad is still here, but the black presence that accompanied him is gone.

I don’t like bringing the past up. I used to get relief from it. I needed to vent because I felt pressured to believe lies. Venting helps you resist gaslighting and other forms of manipulation. Now I don’t feel pressured, so talking about the past doesn’t make me feel better. Now it’s an unpleasant duty. My dad is wonderful; I don’t want to say bad things about him.

It’s too bad I’m not married, because there is no one to witness what’s happening with my dad. I wish someone else could see it. I may shoot some more video.

A bad relationship with a parent is a hard thing to overcome. When you mistreat your kids, it’s as if you tie weights to their legs. Life is tough even with parents who bless you, and when you have to fight your parents every day, it’s much tougher. Getting away from a toxic parent is helpful, but you will still carry the parent’s voice inside you, and their curses will still rest on you. The best cure is true reconciliation through submission to God.

I believe many suicides can be traced to selfish parents. When your parents don’t bless you, you will feel that there is an impregnable wall between you and fruitfulness, and even when you’re alone, you will hear your parents’ voices, increasing the weight of your burdens. Young people kill themselves to end the frustration and get away from the voices.

Many of us work to overcome the voices or to drown them out, but I have something better than that. The voices are gone. My dad is a builder, not a destroyer.

My dad keeps talking about God. Sometimes I take notes in my phone. Yesterday, out of the blue, he said, “Peace of mind could be had if only people would listen to the word of God.” I was stunned. Where did that come from? It had to be the Holy Spirit. I haven’t been lecturing him on the word of God.

He’s not doing well physically. The swelling in his ankles keeps increasing, and now they keep him bandaged because fluid weeps out. The decline hasn’t stopped. At the same time, God is tapering off the difficulties that typically surround the death of a parent. He has helped us to be reconciled. He has helped me prepare for cremation and burial. He has helped me avoid probate. On the one hand, I value my time with my dad more than I used to, but on the other, I have much more peace with the prospect of his departure.

It’s painful when someone dies suddenly or without peace. I knew a lady whose husband walked into the kitchen one day and found her body on the floor. One of my high school friends shot himself in the head. At my last church, we used to pray all the time for a man who had breast cancer, and he was held out as a triumphant recipient of divine healing. Then the cancer spread to his brain, and they say he shouted and ranted at the end. It’s unusual for a person’s death to go smoothly, like a wedding planned months in advance. It’s happening to my dad, and none of it is my work.

I’m glad the estate won’t be a problem. I’m going to write my own will so my own estate passes with as little suffering as possible. Sometimes I don’t care what happens to my wealth, but then I think about the waste that would occur if I died intestate. Much of what I have would go to a person who does nothing but consume and destroy. Surely it would be better to direct it to more productive channels.

I would love to make some provisions for my sister, but to include her in a will at all would be to inflict tremendous, lingering suffering on the personal representative and other beneficiaries, so I can’t do it. There is just no way.

I don’t know how much better my testimony could get. If you’re reading this, be encouraged. God is a very good father.