As I said yesterday, I’ll be taking about my Dad in my next appointment with Georgia. It’s a tough subject, but I know it’s one Patty will be happy about, so let the healing begin. Dad has indeed gotten better over the years, but their still is a lot of residual resentment toward him for the way he treated me back then. From not wanting to mow the yard with a thousand rocks in it to wanting to take my head off for getting in trouble with the law in my teen years (when he was never around by the way and that it was not really any of his business at the time), to always yelling and screaming at me for this or that. I hated Dad for that because he was never the father I needed him to be nor was he ever around. He was never there to take an interest in what I was doing, especially my playing baseball, which I do dearly loved. Has he done that, maybe, just maybe, I might have been able to make something of a career out of it, which was my real dream in life. There, I said it, and I don’t think I have ever told anyone that before. Mom couldn’t do it because she had to take two jobs just to support us 2 kids. She wanted to but just couldn’t. I hated dad for that too. So with Joshua, I wanted for him so desperately to be become interested in sports and to be one a baseball player, too.

I was there to coach him for a season, and then of course he lost interest because I was so hard on him. I don’t blame him for any of that whatsoever. I should have just let him have fun and enjoy the game, but I wanted him to excel so badly that I couldn’t let him do that. And for that, I am more so than I could ever tell him. I know that is what turned him off sports in general, my selfishness. He never wanted to become a St. Louis Cardinals baseball fam, nor did want to become an Alabama football fan, all because of my selfish desires.

I guess that made me very angry and disappointed, it I never blamed myself for it. I projected that on him passively aggressively and most likely I still do. Again, that’s not his fault by any stretch of the imagination; it’s mine. And for that I cannot ever begin to apologize. We do have common interests like in movies, but I’m guessing he chose to like a lot of different movies just to rebel against me. I can’t blame him for that. But the biggest and most hurtful thing I have done to him is to project my spiritual superiority complex on him, and it has turned him against Jesus. I am so ashamed for doing that to him. I never meant to but I did. There is nothing I would not do to let him see the person I am now becoming and the surrendering I am doing for Christ so that he can see the example that I have l always wanted to be for him in the first place.

Lord, I pray you open his eyes and mind and his heart so that Josh would forgive the horrible things I have l done and the horrible example that I have set for him: I love him, and I know how great his life will turn out if he only allows forgiveness in his heart and that his resentment in his heart is erased by God’s love.

Satan, you cannot have my child or my children, whether they want anything to do with me or not. You cannot steal their lives. They belong to God and they are not your minions. They belong to Jesus, and I pray that Patty can forgive me for the hurt I have caused nor only her but Rachel and Joshua. Tomorrow is her birthday, and I’m going to miss it for the first time in 27 years. I hate that with every fiber of my being. I just pray she has a good one and that she somehow thinks of me sometime throughout the day. I love you honey, and I’m sorry this has been a terrible ordeal for you.