In a voicemail...

So I decided to take a nap today. Problem... the nap started at 7 pm. I ended up waking up at 11:30 and here I am writing in my blog. I realized I had missed a few calls, so I checked my voicemail. One message was from my dad... "Hey, just calling to check on you. Take that job. Call me back." With this message, I realized that I don't get to choose who my parents are. I didn't get to choose where I lived for the first 18 years of my life (plus the four in college that my parents PAID for - let's just say my whole life then). And because of my situation now, I don't get to necessarily choose my future. Through one threat from my mom, I feel I am stuck. I have never felt the pain of having clipped wings, but I sure have felt the captivity.

For once in my life, I am not so upset and angry that my parents are the way that they are, and my life happened the way that it happened. Gah, for weeks I have been listening to Paul and Ronnie talk about relationships with our parents, and I continued to turn a deaf ear... but that's where it all starts. If you can't love and respect them, how do you expect to do unto others? I must play the hand of cards I'm dealt. Many a poker player have won a hand on a bluff, but none of them have ever won by folding every time. Yeah ok, so life isn't what I thought it should be. Does that make it wrong or unfair? No. What's unfair is the gift of grace and the reward of freedom.

God gave us parents for a reason. Sometimes we question those reasons, especially when your parents refuse to believe like you do. But nevertheless, they love you. Dysfunction plagues my family, but one thing I know is true - love is there. Within that darkness and pain, there resides love. Maybe it's a glimmer; a fleeting hope, but it's there. I'm not one to have decisions made for me... never have been. But sometimes I must humble myself to truly see... an answer that has been set before me. Take it or leave it, we will still be the same. But our hearts will change.

.k10.