Another Lesson Learned

So I got the news yesterday morning that my grandfather, my father's father, passed away in his sleep the other night. I can't say that I'm grieving or feeling any kind of way, because to be honest the man was absent from my life. I never called him Grandpa, I always referred to him as my grandfather. My mother told me the story about how she brought me to see him, when I was a child, and he just looked at me and kept it moving, he didn't even try to interact with me or talk to me or anything. I guess ever since then he became another man who was absent in my life.

I noticed my father was walking around as if he didn't care that he lost his own father, he even used the words "We'll celebrate", and I had a conversation with him about it. "How do you feel about your father passing?" was the question I asked him. He didn't really have anything to say except that his father was pretty much an asshole. I listened to him speak about his father, and the man that he was, and the entire time I was thinking, "Wow, that sounds familiar." The next question I should have asked him was, "Do you forgive your father for being the way he was?" but the words didn't come out of my mouth.

It's sad how a cycle begins and continues. My father had a broken relationship with his father, so therefore, he had a poor role model to show him how to be a father. Maybe I should be the one to end the cycle by learning to forgive my father for being absent. I guess, if I look at it from his point of view, I'll see that it's not really his fault for being the kind of father that he was/is.

As I think about it, maybe this was the reason I was meant to come down to Florida and spend the holidays with my father. I guess I was meant to really get a better understanding of my father and why he is the way he is. I feel like my father is an asshole, and he will probably never change, but at least since I know the reason why, there's really no reason for me to keep feeling the way I do toward him. He obviously doesn't know any better, and he may be trying to fix our relationship, but if our relationship does stay the same and never changes, I know that when it comes time for me to have a serious relationship with a man and even possibly get married, I won't be dependent on that man for anything except to be a great husband and father. Pretty much what I'm trying to say is, I won't be looking to my husband to fill that "daddy-shapped hole" in my heart. It'll be easier for me to figure out the kind of husband and father the man in my life will be based on the kind of relationship he had or has with his father, and the way he feels toward his father will determine whether or not I should be serious with him.

I see that God is lining up all the lessons I need to learn in order to become the woman He wants me to be for my future husband, and also for me to know what it is I should look for in a future husband. God is good and I know He is preparing me for something great.