Father's Day Frustrations

       Just a few random thoughts about Father's day weekend. I admit I am bitter and resentful. I know there is probably a boatload of unresolved anger that I need to swim through and work on. But for right now I am just staying in the boat to avoid drowning.
       Most holidays are always difficult for me. This one hurts double time. For my daughter, who knows her dad and whose dad has chosen to pretty much reject her, it kills me to see the pain he puts her through. And especially this year, her high school graduation being this past week, and his decision to not only just not show up, but to avoid even answering her message and her having to find out third party that he wasn't coming. He didn't even have the guts to tell her, his mother told her, her grandma. I've told her for years, nothing I or anyone else says to him will get through to him. She needs to tell him. She needs to get mad at him. But she won't. She harbors bitterness and resentment and she loves and wants her dad in her life so much that she is willing to tolerate almost anything to have the chance to have him there, and he still rejects her and it breaks my heart to see and hear. It makes e so angry and I want to just lay him out for it, but there is nothing I can do or say and that kills me.
       To be brutally honest, it makes me wonder sometimes, if maybe she would have just been better off not even knowing her dad. Like me. I don't know who my father is. I probably never will at this point. It's a double edged sword, though. It hurts that I don't have him, yet its a relief knowing that if I don't I'm at least spared going through what I have watched my daughter go through with my ex.
       13 years of school. From kindergarten to grade 12 grad. From sports games to spring concerts, to hospital visits, to birthdays and milestones, I have been there for almost every single one. He has not bothered to make it to even one. Not even when she lived in the same city. But me moving to Calgary with her, that was the ultimate betrayal, according to him. He would say things like "how far away do I have to move before I don't have to pay child support", and "I'll just quit my job and not work then I don't have to pay". He told her she could ask for anything in the world and he would give it to her, yet when she dared ONE time to ask for a small donation to help her add to her fund to get her to her youth group missions trip, she was told "I don't give to charity cases", and that I as her mother would probably just take it and spend it on myself anyways. Who DOES these things? Who does these things to a child, much less their own? And that's just the tip of the iceberg, there is so much more I could describe. But you get the picture. Yet he thinks he is still the father of the year, and his family applauds and supports him. He rejected his own daughter for a girlfriend and her 2 kids, someone who used to be my best friend who turned completely on me and rejected her own husband and denied him his kids so that she could get together with my girls dad. Yet somehow I am the bad one.
       How do I make sense of all this mess with the fact that I am supposed to forgive him, and her, for all the pain they have and continue to cause for me and my daughter? How am I supposed to turn the other cheek? Just when I don't think I can be any more broken, it happens yet again.
       The most common phrase that is heard in christian circles today that is candidly tossed at people like me is Psalm 68:5 "A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling.". Of course, it was even in todays message at my church. Maybe its just me, but it makes me cringe. It just seems so cliche and trite to say. I wonder if anyone who throws that out even understands the weight of what they are saying or who they are saying it to. I have tried to lean on this verse in the past.  Maybe it's just the way its so lightly passed off, who knows.But it really brings me no comfort. In fact it just irritates me right now.
       It's very difficult to attach this personally when to be truthful, I don't even know what a father is. Saying God is a father to the fatherless, when I consider my foster families and the foster dads I have had, makes it seem distant. Like yeah, he takes care of me, out of pity, for a temporary time, until it's too hard or until something better or more worthwhile his time comes along. Don't get me wrong, I have two foster dads who have done alot for me and I love them dearly, and they have accepted me as family and have always treated Kristen as their own. But for me, it just doesn't feel right, or real, and no, I don't know why that is, it just is.
       You can say all the right things to someone and have it go in one ear and out the next. Not because they don't hear you or because they don't care. But because when you have lived your entire life being rejected by your earthly father, how much more difficult is it to trust in one you cannot see or hear? It's like imaginary, almost non existent, like my own real father. Like, I know he existed at one point because if he hadn't I wouldn't be here but there is nothing tangible to tell me that, it's hard to explain.
     So that's my thoughts about fathers. Confused, angry, bitter, and struggling to accept and understand. I don't know if anyone can ever relate. or if anyone can understand, but that's ok, it's just me and I needed to vent this today of all days.
       As for my daughter. I will always be there to pick up the pieces, and hold her. Because I know what its like, and I also know very few ever will understand. She might not see this right now, but maybe sometime in the future she will get it.
        IN church today we also sang about God always being there for us. Never letting us go. ANd as bitter as I am, I will still fight to lean on this because even though I don't believe it sometimes, when I am honest and look back, it is true, I can say that even in my darkest times when I felt the farthest I could ever possibly feel from God, He has always been there. One song said He is in the waiting. I must look up the song because that one line really got me. I am so grateful that my God is so patient. ANd graceful. And that He never leaves me even when I feel like I've never been more alone. That is what I hold onto, with all I have. Because through all my family and friends who have left me, and when people like my girls dad just up and leaves her without so much as a word, just like all she ever wanted was to have her daddy there in her most important moment, all I want is to know that he is there for me, for us. And somehow, at some point, I might even begin to believe it, and then I will be able to rest in that, and to just breathe....