Today would have been my father’s 89th birthday. He’s been gone nine years now. I had a strange experience coincidentally this very day. I was going through some of my mother’s papers, and I found a love letter that my father had written to my mother. I never knew that he had ever written any type of letter to her. He was dyslexic and wasn’t very good at writing. I read the letter. It wasn’t a Shakespearian sonnet of love, but it was his voice expressing his love.
Reading it felt bittersweet because it only confirmed what I already knew. My father loved my mother, my brother and I very much. It wasn’t a conditional love. I never had to say he loved me the best way he knew how. I knew without doubt that my father loved me. He told me that he loved me, he acted like he loved me, he just made some bad mistakes in life. He wasn’t perfect. I never had any reason to doubt his love. At the same time, my heart sank knowing that my father loved my mother so much the same way I loved her and yet, she couldn’t understand that someone could love her.
It feels like the total opposite at the same time. An expression of true love without conditions and at the same time knowing that the other person hated themselves so much that she would never believe she was loved. Maybe that’s what real evil is. It doesn’t start with hating other people, maybe evil starts because we hate ourselves so much we just can’t understand love.
I pray that God give everyone peace and the understanding to know that each and every one of us, as imperfect as we are, can be loved.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
