Update – 02/28/2019
Your letters cleared up all my questions.
You’re not “missing,” you left kicking and screaming — a trail of scum and sludge behind your entitled ass.
No amount of money or support will ever be able to demonstrate the simplicity of grace to you. You condemn like a 7 ton judges gavel, but you cower in an upstairs bedroom from a cop with paperwork.
You aren’t missing, you’re missing the point of faith, life and love.
Maybe we’ll be brothers again in heaven.
Where the hell are you? I know you’re in Kansas, but that’s just your skin and bones.
I want you to itch. I want you to ache. I want you to have nightmares and restlessness until the shadow you’re under is crystal clear.
You were the first face of Christ I saw. You loved me no-matter-what. You believed in justice — even when it was difficult.
Can’t you see you’re as broken as anyone you hate?
How can you cling to self-righteousness? How can you be so oblivious? We’re all Mary Magdalene. We’re all confused.
“When I was a child…” I thought I was blameless. When I was a child I thought I was better than my father, my brother, my mom, my son, my daughter.
When I was a child …
Your son struggles to love you against the yoke you’ve nailed into his new flesh. A father is the first face of God. I wonder what salvation looks like to a boy who can’t become a man unless he fights his father’s battles? Compliance isn’t a prerequisite for love. Obedience isn’t something a man can beat into another. You’ll never find peace or love or family at the end of YOUR crooked justice.
Our fathers’ shadows are long and black. You think your’s isn’t.
Years ago, I hunched myself over an old bench and begged God to save your life. I wish I’d known I’d lose you anyway.
In my dreams I’ve let you go — but not lately. Your face is a distorted memorial in my mind. My hero was stolen by hate. I try to remember who you were before the women and drugs and money.
You think you know me. You think you know what and how I’m doing. I smile every evening while turning the key to a “mansion” I manipulated willing fools to buy for me. I embrace my idiot brother’s latest stupidity and breath freely knowing I’m so … much … better.
Yeah. That sounds like me; I guess it does to you.
I don’t look down on you—I can’t see you at all. I lost a mother when I was young. I gazed helplessly at her casket as it lowered into the ground and locked away from me for no good reason. You may as well be laying next to her. Your screaming and self-pity will never get you what you want. Your hate and condemnation have no place in Christ.