Dear God,
Please excuse me if I sound a little out of it, but I’m feeling kind of small today. I’m hungry and thirsty, and my feet hurt from standing. I have my good days, when I’m glowingly transcendent and strive towards the infinite, stretching myself to go further. Today isn’t one of those days, as much as I wish it were, as much as I need it to be. Today, I am small, so my image of you is small. That’s why I need you to do the impossible, defy your laws of nature and logic. I need the great and infinite to become small. I can’t handle deep theology. Thunder and lightning would be too much for me today. I need a god that can hold my hand. I need a god who has a hand to hold out to me in kindness. I need flesh and blood to help me stand up when my knees feel weak with hunger and fatigue. And dare I say it? I need you to be my father that never was. I demand it of you. I can do that, force your hand, because you took him from me when I was a child of forty-five years. And now that he is gone, you are the only one who can stand in his place.
But not like he was. Don’t get me wrong. He was amazing. But now I need more, something he never was. I needed it badly, even back then, and I suspect he needed it too. But that’s all written in the book of things that never were and never will be. The book of could-have-beens, should-have-beens, was burned last week. And now that my father is gone, now that you have taken him from me, you must stand in his place. And more than that, complete what he could not. Today, I can’t handle a larger-than-life God, and today, of all days, I can’t settle for any less than a father that should have been. But…a lesser god would be like my father, who never forgot the lecture despite my tears, never forgiving even when I lay at his feet, crushed and broken, atoning for every sin, no matter how small, whether I had done it or not. A lesser god would be like my father, dying, leaving me alone with questions unanswered and emotions unresolved. A lesser god’s arms aren’t long enough to reach down into the depths of my pain, where I have hidden my greatest sins. Today, I see you as my dad, but greater than that. Not my father as he lay dying in a hospital bed, gasping unconsciously for every breath, tubes up his nose, a catheter snaking up under his gown, a morphine drip taped to his elbow.
They gave me a button to push if I thought you needed an extra shot of morphine, another cc of poison to push you further away from me. No, not that father who lay groaning in his final sleep. And not that me. That day, I was an adult praying to be a child so some adult could come and take that evil button away from me.
Today you are not a god. Today, you are a man, my flesh and blood father. You taught me to throw a football and gave me a quarter for polishing all your shoes as a birthday surprise. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but today, of all days, that’s the best I can do. Today, I can go into the den while you sit at your desk balancing the chequebook. I wait while you finish up the last figures, squinting at them over your bifocals. I tremble as you glance up—the stains on your old sweatshirt, the one you never wear out of the house.
You look at me, and I begin to cry. And then a miracle happens—an honest to god, earth-shaking miracle. I am not ashamed as the tears run down my cheeks. The shame and weakness, the fears that have walked me through my life, leave me in peace, granting me these few moments with my father that never was. I can hear them waiting for me just outside, panting in anticipation, waiting to punish me for these few moments of glorious light. But I’m okay with that. I wait for the lecture that you always give. The weight of a father’s responsibility rests heavily upon your shoulders. You feel the guilt of every kind word or unconditional praise that might send me down the wrong path. But the lecture doesn’t come. I look up and see the tears rolling down your cheeks as you cry, feeling my pain deeper than I. Before you can lift your arms, I am flying towards you, burying my face in your chest, breathing in your smell, letting my tears soak into that blessed shirt. Today I am small, and that is the best I can manage. So if it’s not too much trouble, for just one day out of the year, when I am hungry and weak, can I call you ‘Dad’? And this time, I mean it when I say I’m sorry and I’ll try harder next time, out of love, not out of fear.
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