So true! It hurts!
My father divorced my mother for a woman 15 years younger than he was. It's been passed around within the family that he left because he didn't want all of us kids.
After he left, we never saw him again, he never wrote, no birthday cards, no phone calls. I was around 8 and although I continued to do all the things kids do which is to adapt to whatever life brings them, there was a deep hole in my heart that stayed empty. I felt so unloved, unwanted, rejected.
The weird thing is that out of those 8 years, I only remember one interaction with my dad. It was my birthday and he whispered in my ear, always wish for this, that you will always be a good girl.
This might sound corney, but every year thereafter I remembered his words and always wished for that same wish year after year and even into my late adult years.
Oh how much we need the love of our parents, if only they could remember what it was like when they were young.
But our parents were broken people without the Lord. And sometimes parents are still very broken while knowing the Lord. We don't heal right away. It's all a process of growing and maturing in the Lord.
As parents to our own children, my husband and I were broken people, both with parents who were divorced. We didn't parent perfectly either, but we did love our kids very much!
I saw where you mentioned how important the relationship with our father is whether good or bad. Another, how true!
So much so that I ended up idolizing my dad, worshipping him to the point of raising him to pedestal status. For years I did that, I so wanted him to show me love, I just wanted to be loved.
I'm sure my mom loved me, but she had her hands full with 7 of us. And now she had to go to work.
Also, I was born a year after one of my sisters and so my mom couldn't give her attention to both of us. My older sister ended up mothering me and as a teenager with her own problems, she didn't really know how to or even want to love on me. So I missed out on the love of a nurturing mom too.
Hopefully some day your parents will change. I wanted to share my story with you and let you know how hurtful it was to go beyond desiring fatherly or motherly love to the point of allowing it to become obsessive. I allowed it to become too important and began idolizing him even after becoming a Christian.
In looking back, as a believer, I needed God's Fatherly love, not my dads anymore.
When I hear God is my father and read the scriptures that actually call Him, 'Father,' it does something inside my innermost being. That love melts away past anger, the past hurt and the loneliness.
He fills me with so much, love, joy and peace knowing that I have a real Father in heaven. It's supernatural. He's always available, He's the essence of love. If I feel alone, He reminds me He'll never leave me, He'll never forsake me.
I'm so sorry that you're parents don't see you as a blessing. *HUGS*!
My guess is that they don't know the Lord yet? Are they divorced? Do you still live with them?
I'll be praying for you and your family, Natania. I don't feel your particular pain, but I share in it with you and grieve with you!
Much love!
I feel ya!
Just another wonderful example of how you're never alone, there is always someone out there who feels what you're going through.
My parents:
My father is abusive, he tried to choke me while I was in the hospital, he constantly used "physical punishment methods" at home, he duck taped my mouth constantly when he wanted me to be quiet (which is actually what took me out of his house, because apparently being beat with a weed Wacker isn't bad enough)
My mum married an alcoholic who had awful anger,
He would constantly throw things at me, chairs, beer bottles, when he was mad he would get up in the middle of the night and throw at the food outside so we had nothing to eat.
My and my mum can't be in the same room without arguing,
Heck I jumped out of a moving car a few weeks ago because of how bad the arguing got.
My step mother,
and step father who I currently live with half the time....
Welll....
That's complicated
I now live with my mom half the time which is a new arrangement