Читать книгу Longing for a Father - Michael Stahl - Страница 6
2 The Dream
ОглавлениеTotally exhausted, I woke up. My heart was agitated; there was chaos in my soul. My thoughts were erratic. I had had a bad dream, or was it not a dream, but rather a message, a request from the one who always wants the best for us?
I had dreamed that my father had died. I knew immediately that my thoughts, my actions, and many other things weren’t as they should have been.
All those years, I had treated my father like a good Christian would, or so I thought. I had never written him off, although I had been furious with him so often and had often been ashamed of him. Over and over again, I had tried to keep peace with him.
I knew that morning that I had to do something I should have done a long time ago: seek true peace with him.
I thought I had accomplished quite a bit in my life. Though I was married for the second time, I also had a wonderful son, Manuel, from my first marriage. I was my own boss and reasonably successful. But what I hadn’t been able to achieve by that time was to be reconciled to my father.
This dream shook me; this dream tugged at me.
I got ready right away knowing what I had to do: visit my father and make peace with him before the day came when I would no longer be able to do it.
My father had never worked as far back as I could remember. I was constantly tormented in school because of that and was ridiculed by my classmates, even later as an adult.
One day during my apprenticeship, I was sent to get something from a shop. When I got in line at the counter, an older lady in front of me was talking excitedly with one of the sales clerks about another man. Suddenly, I realized who they were talking about. They were badmouthing my father, who was standing outside the shop window. With disgust, the clerk labeled my father a drunk and a scumbag. The woman agreed, and both of them complained further that they had to support such scum with their taxes. I felt shocked, unable to react, I wished the ground would swallow me up, or that I were somewhere far away, but I was here and had to listen to such terrible things about my father. I stood as if paralyzed.
The clerk looked straight at me while he was pointing at my father, still standing in front of the window, and asked, “Do you know that man, too?”
I swallowed hard. What should I answer? How should I react? What would be the right thing to do now?
Blushing conspicuously and with a trembling voice, I said, “No, I don’t know that man.”
I could hardly believe what I had just said. Instantly, I remembered Peter, who denied his Lord three times and claimed not to know Jesus and never to have met him before.
Deep in the innermost part of my heart, I heard a rooster crow.
Jesus said to Peter at the Lord’s Supper that Peter would deny him three times before the rooster crowed. That’s exactly how I felt. Caught—having denied my own flesh and blood, my own father.
We can never undo what we have done. And we can’t take back our failure.
And now I had dreamed that I had lost my father. I set out to find him. Normally, he was always on the go, but that morning, I drove for just a few seconds and there he was on the side of the street. So he was still alive. I found him and looked for forgiveness and peace.
I stopped right in the middle of the busy street, rolled down my window and yelled, “Dad, I do like you!”
As he couldn’t hear well, he asked what I had said and I yelled a second time, “I do like you!” Puzzled, he just looked at me. Before we could go on talking, we were interrupted by loud honking from the cars behind me. So I drove on.
No, that was not enough, my heart was completely messed up. I felt that was not enough. I had never read in the Bible that we should like each other.
No, Jesus’ last wish was, “Love one another, as I have loved you” (John 15:12).
We shouldn’t just like one another, but love one another.
I prayed and told God that I knew what his desire was and what he wanted me to do. I said, “OK, God, I will go to my father. The problem is I have three appointments today that I can’t miss, and I have to keep my word. If one of them is cancelled, then I’ll go.”
I thought I could make a deal with God because the truth was that I didn’t want to go to my father. I thought the ‘I like you’ would be enough. But God wanted more, because he knows me and knows what is good for me.
Somehow I didn’t want to make myself vulnerable or to humble myself before my father. Especially because he was the one who had wronged me so much, and he could just as well have come and said something nice to me.
The ringing of my cell phone ripped me away from my thoughts. I answered. It was a man telling me he had to cancel the appointment today at 2 o’clock and would need to make arrangements for a new one.
Now I knew I didn’t have to negotiate deals with God; he had a fixed plan. From this moment on, I trusted him completely.
I drove to the bar above which my father rented a small, modest room.
I walked up the steps to the second floor and stood in front of his little room, number five. My heart was pounding. It was full of love. Now I knew everything was going to work out because God was with me.
Thirty-seven years without true peace—but with God at my side, my faithful friend, companion, and protector, the Father of all fathers, I knew that a new life would soon begin.
I was ready to give everything and knew that I would get even more.
I knocked on the door and entered the meager room.
There he stood in front of me. We faced each other just like 30 years ago. But this time I didn’t ask for a present, but brought the biggest present, which I had always been carrying inside me—love for my father.
He wasn’t as overwhelming any more. Weak and fragile, he stood in front of me, his look and posture insecure. He waited for what would come now. I’ll never forget this moment. I felt how God was leading me and gently pushing me, how he was with me and was longing for reconciliation. I said two things to my father, “Dad, I love you,” and, “Please forgive me.”
Divine silence surrounded us and spread out in the room.
My father looked at me for several seconds totally amazed. I felt his thoughts, “What? He is coming to me? I beat him up and kicked him, I spit on him, and now he is asking me for forgiveness?”
In the midst of his astonishment, I said, “Dad, don’t wonder why I’m apologizing. With every day you didn’t satisfy my desires, I moved further away from you. I shouldn’t have moved further away, but closer to you. My whole life long, I have felt ashamed of you and have wanted to change you. But I have learned one thing—I can only change one person and that’s me. Even if you have made thousands of mistakes and I have only made one, I ask you: please forgive me this one mistake.”
My father looked at me. No rage, no contempt. Instead of that, a warmth spread in his heart and eyes.
He came closer to me, hugged me and did what I had longed for 30 years ago. He held me close and whispered in my ear, “I love you.”
Through this dream, my humility and my decision to look for peace, the Almighty God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, came into this poor, shabby little room. The peace of God filled this small room. Heaven itself came down to us.
The love of God was in us and around us. Arm in arm, united—that’s how fathers and sons should live and stay together.
For that to happen, however, we need people who listen to God’s word, who trust him, and who will dare to do crazy and bold things with the certainty that God will not leave them all alone.
My father became a new man that day. It was as if he were born anew. A friendship started. He became the guest of honor in our house.
In June 2009, my daughter was born. He held her in his arms and wept. He sensed that home is not a place marked on a map, but a place where you are with the people who love you.
He became the best grandpa you could wish for and gave his all. He learned that the more he gave out of love, the more he got back.
We prayed the Lord’s prayer together over and over again.
The love of our God lives in us and through us. I learned that there is only one person I can change, and that’s me. Only when I had changed did he change.
I would like to ask you, when you last told your father that you loved him? If you don’t have a father, ask God to be your father. He will care for you. If you live in strife, hatred, or even indifference, go the way I went, yet today. But don’t go alone, take God, your Heavenly DAD, with you.
Experience the miracle I experienced. Don’t wait for the miracle, but be a miracle yourself. God loves you and you are never alone.