Ioavva, you must be impacting me! Look what I'm posting today. Back in December, I attended a mission by Father Tom Allender. Father covered just about all of my sins and spent private time with me. While addressing marriage problems he correlated many of my behaviors to my family upbringing and all were true. Rage, silent treatment, and criticism, nasty criticism were everyday occurrences. I ran from them but regardless of the distance they were there onboard rearing their ugly head each time I felt threatened. Father said part of my cure was to become friends with my father. I asked how? We never talk, if we do its some criticism about some bum, to which Father said just spend time. Don’t air your differences just spend time. Spend time? I’d rather die! Needless to say me the supreme business solution guru couldn’t figure a way to act until my mom was hospitalized and I flew home and it was dad and I. We went to breakfast, church, and visited mom in the hospital. Stage 1 complete. This morning I called fully expecting my mother to answer. Dad never answers the phone. Somehow God must be working on a miracle and low and behold its not a two minute “have mom call me” but an hour talk about me, and kids and my wife. Compassionate not critical. Empathy not solutions. Father once said, “Want to make God laugh? Tell him your plans.” I couldn’t have planned my mother’s operation nor could I have planned the phone call it’s somehow about letting people come to you rather than taking it to them. “That’s all the news from Lake Woebegone, where all the women are strong, all the men are handsome, and all the children are above average.”
