Her death was an emptiness that would haunt my life and I did not know how to fill that void. My father shut himself off inside his church. He was a pastor who was closed off to his children. We were now nothing but a reminder of the wife he lost. We were nothing but a burden like predicted.
My father hid in his work, not knowing how to deal with his own hurt. Loss of love hurts so badly. When he was alone, he would think about us and how he wanted to love us and help us. He thought about how much we must be hurting also. That is because his heart was good. He would promise himself that he would do things better. He would be a better father. But he did not pray concerning us. He did not call on God to be our father. He tried to do it in his own power. And whenever he was in our presence, Demon Suffering squeezed his throat so that the right words would not come out and my father would run from our presence to seek relief from that pain that he always felt when he was around us.
And then a new demon joined my father: Demon Regret. Now he could never be a father again. He had messed everything up in our family. He quit trying.
To be continued…
Beautiful Life with Cancer 