Honesty Pants

This is a poem I wrote for all of my friends who have broken relationships with their fathers --- and who struggle with understanding God as Father because of it.

This poem is a collection of stories that I have heard, but know that the words apply to any broken relationship.

I have learned the hard way, like all good, humbling lessons are earned, that bitterness is the noose you tie around your own neck with you own two unforgiving hands at the prompting of a stubborn and deceivingly entitled heart.

Choose to believe this today: There is so much freedom that can be found in forgiveness.

Choose to believe that God is a perfect Father despite the poor sinful reflections of fathers that are here on earth.

Choose to believe that what God says is true -- that He will never leave you or forsake you and that He rejoices over you will great delight and singing.

Daddies & Daughters

I fall for men who are like my father.
He has never bought me a bouquet of flowers; the only kind of vegetation he picks are weeds
He's too high
and mighty to think of me.
Daddie, you never set the bar
You just went to it nightly.
Never was an evening I saw you sober
Now all I believe in
Are less than mediocre
Men who stumble upon parenthood
And call themselves fathers.

He was absent long before he ever left.
I have never even thought to look for the face of God because I only expect to see the back of his head
Leaving.
Long before the ninth inning
Tired of playing in this family game you were
Going, going
and the day you were gone
I wonder if I looked like a better idea in the rear-view mirror
Than I ever felt in your arms
Such a foreign embrace.
Such an ugly disgrace
I am
A caterpillar of a daughter has never known the comfort of a cocoon.
Scarred by the struggle to believe that she was made to be
a butterfly ---
Because my spiritual wings were clipped
When I caught my father in bed with his 5'3" mid-life crisis.
She didn't even look like my mother.
She was a size fourteen of excuses.
and on that day
my heart
became a buffet of abuses

Daddie,
these rose-colored glasses were cracked long before
they were ever broken.
Your words were empty
Long before they were ever spoken.

And home has become an empty cathedral
Where I sit on vacant padded pews
The ballad of pain bounces strongly off these walls
As I weep

My heart seeping
My faith howling
There is a casket at the front
Does it hold the corpse of my haunting shame?
What I would not give to shed
My exoskeleton of a surname.

But in that hallow church
Freedom found me.
It sat next to me dressed as Forgiveness.
He was bruised, broken, and bloody.
A perfect man
Who not only hung the moon
But who still holds it in his hands

The Lord God is with you,
the Mighty Warrior who saves
He will take great delight in you;
In his love He will rejoice over you with singing.