Sunday, June 9, 2013

God, guide me to the path that leads to the highest and greatest form of love. This is my prayer.

                                          


It's all slowly making sense now.  Pieces are coming into place and I can see how events of the past have come to shape the reality of my present life.  I am seeing how God has answered all my prayers - especially one that I have repeated  for the past 10 years.  The way in which he has chosen to answer them has taken me aback and left me pondering more of His mysterious ways.  The manner in which my prayers have been answered is not at all what I had expected,  but then again, I just put out my wish to the universe without specifiying the details of how God would fulfill and manifest it in my life.  But first, let me go back in time to some ancestral history to get a fuller picture of how I got to where I am today.

My paternal grandmother had 8 children, I believe, most of who died during the Korean War in their teen years.  Only three of her children survived into adulthood: my father, my aunt (his older sister) and my uncle (his younger brother).  My paternal grandfather was a farmer and a raging alcoholic, an addiction he passed on to my father.  His mother, my great great grandmother, was known to have a ballistic temper and would fly off the handle quite easily.  My father inherited her temper but I am suspicious as to whether they both suffered a mental condition of some type such as a mood disorder.  My father's childhood was lived in the context of the end of the Korean War where poverty made people mean and preoccupied with  getting their own ahead in life.  My father lost his father at an early age (cirrhosis of the liver, most likely)  and was sent to live with his uncle as a photography apprentice by his mother as she was unable to support all her children.  Growinbg up, he never fully experienced unconditional love and was perhaps even abused by his uncle's wife who resented him living in her household.  He watched as his uncle lavished praise, gifts, the best they had to their only son while treating my dad more like a servant than an apprentice.  This experience had a deep impact on his psyche and growing up without love shaped him into a person who was not capable of either giving or receiving authentic love from\to others as well as to himself.  His life lead to self abuse, alcoholism, verbal abuse of his children and physical\ verbal abuse of his wife which eventually lead to divorce.

Growing up, I had alot of resentment towards my father. I still do.  I did not understand his self destructive ways. Now, I understand what lead him to be who he was.  Ever since this epiphany, I have prayed for over 10 years that God would guide me to the path of greatest love in its highest form since I knew where the path lack of love lead.

God has answered my prayer in the form of a disabled son.

...to be continue.