"In search of my father"

It was the second last week of July 2002 and I was 20.

My parents separeted when I was only one year old. My mother was obliged to raise us alone as best as she could, my sister and me. When I observe the relationship of certain people with their father, I  wander myself what would have been my life if I had my father with me at home. I only met my father from time to time. We didn’t really get to know each other well. He never opened his heart to me to let me use his experiences and learn lessons about life.

After praying God and felt His love, I had hunger for changes in my life, in my relationship with my father. So I told my mother  I wanted to have a real relationship “father-son”. With my mother’s help and the one of some other people, I decided to get back to my father’s family.  I got back to my father because I loved him and I wanted to have the courage to say it to him one day. But I always missed the chances which were presented to me by saying to myself : “I will have time”!

It was too late

On Wednesday August 1st, 2002, I was visiting my father’s brother with whom I had a quite good relationship. I was convinced that I was very close to my aim. Then, my uncle’s phone rang. The news fell down. His brother, and that means my father, has just died on his working place. I remember the first thing I said  after I realized I would never see him again : “I’ve never told him I love him”. I was destroyed by a feeling of guiltiness. I didn’t stop saying to myself that a week before, with a simple call and a dose of courage, everything could have been different … At the age of 20, I have lost my father as well as all the responses to all my questions. Loosing one’s father is a kind of loosing one’s landmark. And when we lose our landmark, we are lost. So I was lost.

I found my real father

One evening, while sitting on the ground in my bedroom, I realized how much God was my father, in the Bible. I got stuck to this thought and I kept praying. I realized that I’ve lost a father but I was persuaded that the OTHER ONE has already adopted me. And I was His Son for ever.

That evening, I had enough courage to go to God, my father. I confessed Him my errors, my anguishes, my fears, my aims even if I knew that somewhere He already knew them. I repeated Him that I loved Him and that I wanted to be like Him. He dried my tears and filled the gap with an extraordinary love for the rest of my life.

Now, I live to please Him every day and as far as I grow up, it’s Him that people recognize in my temper.  Thanks to Him, I know from where I come and where I am going.

For me, the day I found God was also the day I discovered at last who I was.

Patrick