Daddy's Little Girl

I know I haven’t posted in a while.

I’ve been taking a math class that is hell on wheels this quarter. Thank God for Pass/Fail options.

But this morning something happened. Completely unexpected.

I was having a conversation with a close friend. She revealed to me that her father, a PK and oldest of six children was beaten on a regular basis by his father. His father was also the one who taught him about God. She said he was the only child of six who was beaten and that his father usually tied the reasoning to something spiritually lacking in him.

I made the comment that the other children, having seen what he went through, probably did their best to fall in line. After all, when I was a child I had an older sister who fought constantly with my parents over everything. I, on the other hand, gave in, all the time, even when it wasn’t healthy for me. Even when it was damaging. I told my friend it was my effort to appease them.

And then I stopped.

And as the light bulb went on in my brain I couldn’t help but mouth what I was thinking.

I said, “I’m 42 years old and I still do the same thing. Oh my God! I’m 42 years old and I’m still doing the same thing!”

The really horrible thing was what I couldn’t admit to my friend. Deep down inside, I wasn’t really trying to appease my parents. I was trying to make them love me.

This may sound a little corny, but at that moment, I finally realized that when people are incapable of loving you for your intrinsic value as a human being, there is nothing in the world you can do, buy, be or say to change that. And the longer it takes you to realize that, the more of your life you will waste trying to win over the people who can never really love you, instead of appreciating the people God put in your life who already do.