Father To Son, Part 1

I wrote this in an email to a friend, and it is, I think, a turning point in my relationship with my father.

I learned something very, very important last week, about the relationship between my father and myself, and I think it might change a lot about the way I feel about almost everything.

I used to dread having to speak to my dad, because he would always, always yell at me, criticize me, embarrass me, lecture me, and in all ways forcing his views in my face and trying to coerce me into accepting his way of thinking. There are countless stories of things and events that have happened between my dad and me, things that fill up the back of my brain, and things that have inevitably influenced me for better or for worse.

These father-son episodes were all very repugnant to me, and there was so little that I respected about the way he went about things. Whenever I could, I rejected his words out of hand, and even a bit childishly ridiculed them. Obviously, this caused him to fly into a rage and curse at me, etc. But I provoked him on purpose because I would rather him rage at me for 20 minutes than have him criticize and lecture me for even 21 minutes. It caused a great deal of indirect hurt to happen to me (which is funny, because my dad's rage was vented directly at me, not indirectly), and a great deal of direct hurt to happen to my dad (which is also funny, because my refusal to accept my dad's point of view should be an indirect hurt).

But here's what the Holy Spirit revealed to me last week. My dad, for all his brilliance and for all his faults, was, in his limited way, trying to create a relationship between me and him. It was the only way he could communicate with me, the only method he knows how to communicate with his son. And I couldn't see that until last week. So, for the great majority of my adult life, I have been throwing his words back at him in various ways, and this action was really me rejecting his attempts to reach out to me. And me, by purposely provoking him and accepting his rage rather than his "counsel," I was indirectly turning myself to stone - my heart was hardening to my dad, and I didn't even know it.

I don't condone or respect the way that my dad handled things with me, when I was growing up. But I understand it now, I see the limitations and the history which made him make difficult choices with parenting and having him decide that, given how difficult it was to succeed in this world, it was more important to "toughen" me up than it was for me to feel loved, in the short term.

There's more to be said, but I guess, for later.

-David