I debated a lot about writing this. It is a very personal sort of matter, something that I’ve had to deal with for a long, long time.
And, it is a little bizarre.
And, possibly, a little creepy.
Now is the portion of the blog where I break into the joke, where I reveal my love of the song Sold (The Grundy County Auction Incident) by John Michael Montgomery (despite my hatred of country music), or I talk about why I shower in the dark, or some other such inconsequential nonsense that is part of my character but doesn’t really affect anything.
Only, this isn’t one of those kind of postings.
You know, it is amazing, even now, how hesitant I am to type about this. I actually find myself pulling my hands away from the keyboard every once in a while.
This is a rough time of year for me. In less than a week, the third (Is it only the third? Is it already the third?) anniversary (which is far too festive a word to use for this) of my father’s death will pass. And, I, for one, am tired of his visits.
Threw you there, didn’t I?
Yeah, well, you should try to be on my end.
Now, before you start getting really concerned for my well-being and personal sanity, let me explain. After all, this is Therapeutic Thursday (cheaper than counseling!).
I know I’m not being visited by my father. My father has gone on to his eternal reward in Heaven, thanks to his acceptance of God’s gift of grace through his Son’s death and ressurection.
Instead, I have dreams in which my father is manifested by my own mind.
And, yeah, they come every year about this same time. Usually only one dream, but just enough to rock my world for a while.
What does this manifestation of my father do in these dreams that warrants my decidedly gruff opinion of wishing the visits would stop? Hmm… before I get into that, I need to give a little background.
I loved my father, love him still, but I’ve never been under any illusion that he was more than human, with failings and weaknesses while on this earth. Unlike what you hear about a lot of people from their family after a person passes, I did not ret-con his life to an idealized thing.
My father did some great things, and some bad things. He did his best most of the time, but his idea of the “best” wasn’t necessarily really the “best.”
Picture it: Spring, 1988. A young boy, 12 years old, comes home from school, about 2:30 p.m., talking about a report he is to do for a class about his future career. The boys love of drawing and art dictate that the report should be in that direction, and the boy is excited having chosen to write about his future career as a comic strip artist.
His father, from some place of love, I’m sure, decides that it is time to set the young boy straight about the difficulty of such a career quest in the real world and the boy’s actual ability. I’m sure that father only attempted to try to protect his son from future hurt… but that did not come across.
Instead, the “talk” shatters the boy, rocking him to the core, knowing his father had no faith in him. It is only amplified, when, at 3:15 p.m., before anything can be smoothed over, the father leaves for work… leaving the crying child with his mother.
Within 45 minutes, a boy goes from pure joy and hope in his future to completely knowing there is no hope. 45 minutes to the loss of that innocence. And the father never, ever really understood what he had done.
Sure, the boy continued to draw, but not with the same joy.
He would shortly change his mind, decide to focus on science with thoughts toward eventually working at NASA. Then, a few years later, God would call him into ministry, but without a specific direction. He would go to college, with plans to major in Christian Studies and minor in English. It is during orientation that his father asks him why doesn’t he minor in art, since he was into that.
The boy, in a completely impulsive decision, tells his advisor that he wants to double major in Art and Christian Studies. He knows that he is behind where he should be, in skill level, since art had become a hobby for him, a thing to do in free time but not worked at, but he can’t resist this glimmer of encouragement from the same man that shattered his dreams five years earlier.
It was a pretty good decision, since the area of ministry he was called into depended on him becoming more serious about art.
Now, I didn’t tell you any of that to evoke a “poor Billy” response. I’ve dealt with this, and that isn’t why I told you.
I told you because, likely thanks to this event, the manifestation of my self-doubt has, since my father’s death, taken his form. And, once a year or so, I get an entirely unpleasant visit in my dreamscape from my self-doubt, clothed in my father’s skin.
Yep. And, yeah, it is messed up.
I won’t go into the details of the dreams, because, frankly, I don’t remember them. They are whisps at the edge of my consciousness that I cannot retain. What does stick, though, are the words of Father Doubt.
I have had one dream this year, over the past weekend, and, hopefully it will be the last. At least, I hope, for the year, because, regardless of knowing that this is not my father, it still hits me hard and I need time to recover.
What kind of message did I receive this year? Well, it does change a little each year, but this year, my fake father basically said, “Okay, Billy, I think its time to just put away all these dreams of yours and get a real job, with real benefits, so that you can have some sort of future.”
I put quotes around it, but it was more of a paraphrase.
It sure didn’t help that I’ve been sick this week, either. It never rains but it pours, right?
Nevertheless, feeling better today, I move forward, dismissing the self-doubt, regardless of the form it takes, and press on.
But, honestly, I can do without another visit.
Seriously.
I’ll type at you later.
