By AbbyA

JMathis’ piece on the softness of men is so refreshing. For those of us who have been through a lot in our marriages, with our father figures or even with God, we forget how much the same we are with our fellow brothers. Whether they are husbands, brothers, dads, sons, boyfriends, the river we feel between us is not so large or vast. Bindu was so right when she talked about the hunter within us  – – whether we are fishing for shoes or fishing for men. The cross over is as large as the river between us.

I’m here in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Yesterday, I celebrated my second Father’s Day without my dad, and today, my 36th birthday. Since I got married nine years ago, had my babies and started a business, there has been a part of me that lacked confidence. It played out like feeling other moms knew more or had more experience than me. Or, that who I am wasn’t accomplished enough. I have all of this fruit around me, but didn’t feel I had the authority to acknowledge these good things were flowing out of the good in me.

There has been a certain amount of healing in the last few days. I have recognized how much my dad loved me. Without dredging the details, my dad was highly esteemed and very important in the lives of thousands of people over the years. Many of those people got to be around and spent a lot of time with my dad. Hundreds of these people came to his funeral, hundreds more wrote in his online guest book. I love how much he was loved. I spent a lot of time over the last year and a half longing for and wanting to be some of those individuals. I felt like they somehow “got more” or were on the “inside.” And, I was on the outside. Just the sort of thing that contributes to the killing of confidence. Because the “she” inside of me was just a little girl when he became so far away.

Call it my mother’s intuition or her extraordinary relationship with the Lord, “she” asked me, just the other day, to pray about receiving the great love my dad had for me. God showed me that, to my dad, I am more valuable than the air he breathed. It changed my heart. It has brought me leaps and bounds in the way of feeling justified. Comfortable with who I am, not as the smarty twenty-something. But as the mother, wife and friend that I am.

I will wrap it up by saying that there is sometimes a river between us. Male and female in the roles of father-daughter, husband-wife, mother-son. But there also is the cross over. That would be our Lord Jesus Christ who always makes a way to remove the space in between. My prayer for each and any one of you is that wherever you find the empty space or wherever you see the questions marks in your life, that you would seek Him to find the healing you need to be the full person God made you to be. I am quite sure that the river was meant to freely flow between us. Only He can make life this beautiful.