Coming home from my first prayer meeting in three weeks, an uplifting celebration as we rejoiced together in the risen Lord, my bride was watching the last movie of the Sarah Plain and Tall trilogy. I've never seen beyond the first of them, which was a pretty decent movie for a made-for-tv production. So it isn't as if I was put off by the fact that these were on; there is plenty of entertainment I just disdain, but these I have a basic respect for.
Still, the scene I walked in on was a reconciliation between a middle-aged man and the elderly father who had abandoned him and his mother when he was a young child. It struck me as an honest scene, resonant with the complex dynamics that such a moment would be likely to have in real life, as this regret-filled father had the emotional integrity not to ask forgiveness or understanding of his son as he forthrightly shared the reasons for his long-ago decision and the effects it had on his life without minimizing the effects it had also had on his wife and son. In response, this son shared a bit of what the experience had been like for himself and his mother, without heaping anger upon the man who had caused their pain. As a result of their honest sharing, they were able to share a moment of mercy and grace together in the form of a heartfelt embrace, for which the father was clearly deeply grateful.
I had to leave the room.
I know I have a heavenly Father who makes up for every lack in my life. Yet I was still filled with an overwhelming longing for the earthly father I have never known, who set my life in motion as he should have never done - that is a statement against his adultery, not my existence - and then left it as he should.
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