I thought I would share an important story of healing in my life that is much different than what I have shared before on this blog. Healing is so powerful and it amazes me how it comes in such different ways. I am so grateful for this healing. Its changed my life in so many ways…
In Health and Healing,
Sera
Sunday Night Calls
My life has changed a lot due to a phone call. Usually, not for the good. I have had my heart-broken with a phone call, told it was cancer on a phone call, told that loved ones have died via a phone call. This story though, this time, this phone call, this change, was for the good, a big good and I didn’t even know. For years, I didn’t even know. I still do not know that I can, today, fully know how powerful that phone call was. The call, this one to my Dad, it was a chance, a risk, a challenge I leaned into that has changed my life.
You would not think this call was so changing because it was just Dad. My Dad the patient, kind, loving man who thinks the world of me and my sisters. The man that would do anything for me. He would answer the phone every time I’d call. If I would just call.
I did not always see my Dad’s patience, kindness, humbleness and love for me the way I can today. Thanks to that phone call. It’s not that my Dad did not embody or show me these character traits of patience, kindness, love. It was that I was too distracted to see them.
For most of my life, until the time of the phone call, I was so caught up in evaluating the man who left me when I was a small girl. Maybe not on his own terms, but he was my Dad, the man in my life, and he left my comfortable, yet maybe chaotic, safe home. Although he emphasized throughout my childhood that he wished and prayed more than anything that he could be back in that home. I couldn’t see how it could happen and I knew my Mom would have none of it.
I was so mad at him for leaving and making me so different, yet, I didn’t even know I felt this.
I was angry at the separation of my parents. I was angry at how it made me feel different from other kids. Most of my friends had a Mom and Dad at home. They did not have to pack their bags every other weekend to go spend time with their Dads. They did not have to listen to the negativity about their parents from loved ones. They did not have to make decisions of who to spend time with, who to stick up for, Mom or Dad, and who to be nice to regularly. I did and it was hard. It made me feel different and I hated that.
The leaving, the being different, the separation, it felt like rejection and so I gave rejection to Dad, the easiest target.
Even so, Dad would show up every week, at every game that I played field hockey, basketball, it didn’t matter where, how far, what time. Dad was there. He would always slowly, peacefully walk up to the court, the field and sit calmly, lovingly by himself. He would cheer for me. He’s always cheered for me. He’d patiently wait for me after each game even if I talked to everyone else before him. He’d wait on me to embrace and share with my Mom, my Mom’s family, my boyfriend, my friends. Then him. He’d wait for me. He always waited for me.
Dad always showed up to pick my sister and I up on our “weekends.” He was consistent. He showed up. No matter what. He never left me. He never scolded me for my coldness. He never punished me for my anger and the distant I build between us. Instead he kept showing up.
I never thought about what this was like for him.
Until that day of the phone call.
By this point I was in my twenties, I had been working for years on bettering myself. Growing up. Cleaning up relationships in my life and bad boyfriend relationships of my past. I really wanted great health, happiness, a great career, I was on the search for love, when a coach that had mentored me for years asked (again), “Sera, how is your relationship with your Dad?” After a sigh, a “its fine,” we talk every few months and I see him at holidays, she suggested I start a regular call with him and just consider hearing his story. What did I need to do that for? I was trying no heal me here, get me better – not him. Selfishness and anger creeped in, but luckily for me, a small, still voice inside encouraged me to make the call.
It was a bit awkward, considering we were not used to talking that much. Dad was very grateful for my outreach and suggestion that we talk more. I thought I was grateful too, but as soon as my Dad started to say things I didn’t like and make me “feel different” again, I got angry, I lashed out and I yelled at him. And just as quickly as it started, I decided the calls would stop.
Some how they didn’t.
Some how I called again and we talked about the frustration of the previous call. I shared with him how he made me feel different and it made me angry and just want to stay away. I shared with him how I thought some of his views of the world were so different and they angered me and made no sense to me. He shared with me how he had no idea that I felt this way. He shared about the pain he felt leaving my childhood home and how that broke his heart. He shared about how he desired more with me and I pushed him away.
Like matured adults we talked and we shared. And I started to listen. I started to hear my Dads story.
That was 4 years ago.
4 years later, what started as a simple phone call has become a healing space for 2 people who dearly wanted love from each other, but did not know where to start.
I slowly began to see this man who loved me so dearly. I slowly began to hear the life of this man who created me. I slowly started to hear his story, the pain, the loneliness, the rejection. I recognized my own pain in that pain. I saw those childhood memories with new eyes and somehow they healed me. Some how just by hearing, I healed. Just by witnessing, we grew.
He’d share, I’d listen.
I’d share, He’d listen.
Our conversations became longer and longer, deeper, more spiritual and profound. I learned so much from and about my Dad.
We became great friends, we shared life.
As if this wasn’t enough, several months after these calls started, I was re-aquanited with another man in my life. A wonderful, patient, kind, loving man who I had pushed away before. Yet, he kept showing up and patiently waited. We started talking on the phone. Night by night we talked about our lives and what our relationship was like before. Night by night we grew, we healed, until 3 years later we remained magically, in love, deeply committed.
And he knows, that each Sunday, he can’t be with me, because I have a phone call date.
With my Dad.
Sera Fiana 