Reflections on God and His Role as a Father in My Life

      Recently, I've been working on a personal project which I honestly don't know if I'll ever publish. I'm writing it, setting it up, as though I am, but the truth is that I'm still not certain about it, and if I do, it won't be soon. There are too many people who might be pictured in a negative light at some point along it, though I have taken pains to make certain that my own sins do not go unrecorded. This project is currently called, "The Testimony of a Wandering Priest: Trying to Make Sense of My Life." It is both a confession and a memoir of my life. I have written many versions of my life story over the years, most of them as condensed as possible depending on what I was writing them for. Even then, it has been difficult to condense the story of my life even at only forty eight years, almost forty-nine, because of everything which has happened within it. A paragraph simply will not do. A few pages barely suffice to provide an outline. Mine has not been a stationary, uneventful story. I have had it in the back of my mind for years now to write it out in detail, and recently it seemed to finally be the time.

     The thing which continues to stand out to me is how much of an active role God has taken in my life. As I wrote therein, and have said for over thirty years, there was an agreement between God and myself when I was fourteen that he would take over the role of Father in my life, and I would be His son. He has never gone slack on His end of it. I suppose writing it out though has demonstrated to me exactly how much He kept His end of it in terms of provision, guidance, and discipline. Not punishment, but discipline as the places, situations, and people He brought into my path shaped me, my behavior, and my ways of thinking in the way He wanted them to go, sometimes incredibly painfully, but not always.And He has expressed His love for me in a myriad of ways as well, even when I didn't understand it at the time, also being careful to not overwhelm me, knowing my autistic limitations. He took things at the speed I could handle, even when I thought differently.

     There have been many father figures who have come and gone in my life, many who tried, many unintentional, and a few who just clicked at times. I owe little bits of who I am today, and the kind of dad I became, to all of them. But in writing out my life story, the one who truly acted as my Father, protecting me, nurturing me, teaching me, disciplining me, and providing for me throughout my life, has been none other than God Himself. And so while I am appreciative to all those men who tried to briefly fill that role at least in some part, I think that my own "Happy Father's Day" wishes go to only one Person, and that is the Father who stayed with me and never left.