Good Morning! If you are a new subscriber or here for the first time, welcome! This is part of a series that begins here. Today is admittedly a long one. And I thought to break it up into two parts but that didn’t work. So today’s DNA story will be for these two weeks and I’ll see you on the other side. This one’s a little rougher around the edges. But the ones who mind don’t matter and the ones who matter won’t mind. - Fleur
I’ve been sick for about a week (that feels like a month). I do not get sick often at all (thanks, God!) so whenI do I’m just a little surprised by it. After about five days I begin to realize what makes me feel even more sick: television, talking at all, and finally, anything that’s just not beautiful. After a few days of total peace, I realize that even turning on any screen made me feel like throwing up. I think, so if it makes me feel that way when I’m feverish, what’s it doing to me every day on a normal basis? I don’t watch a lot of TV but I am on screens a lot. I gave it up for a good five days in a row. I could get used to that. I’m reminded of when I deleted my Facebook account a few years back. I rejoined but I delete it off my phone at least.
I figure though, if as a writer/performer there’s always going to be a level of participation in screen time then I’m going to focus more on partaking in beauty.
My husband and I recently made the decision to relocate (once again) back to the northeast where we were in Yardley, Pennsylvania. Let me show you some photos of what that looks like.
We made the break and left PA two years ago because I missed my family. I missed my mother. I missed my brothers (having no idea how I would come to appreciate their love in the near future). I wanted to be “home” for a while. But if you’ve read my stories for any amount of time you’ll know that somehow there always seems to be a bigger picture to the choices we make and that God works in his thoughts and ways directing your crooked paths to His straight ones. In this case it seems we are experiencing a holy u-turn.
Holy U-turns don’t look like regular worldly u-turns. I believe they are a grace of God. He allows us to double back - made new. You start back as you round the corner but then you see an on-ramp to a wholly, holy, new level up so that you may see things from an upper level and a new understanding. I can say for certain that Peter and I are made new by the last two years in Texas. It has a been fully FULL. We have been faced with so much while we dove head (or feet?) first into the new life that we chose and another that was thrust upon us by the hand of God. We don’t regret a moment. We’ve grown too much for that.
But it’s time to go home.
Where is Home?
Home is ultimately where your family is. Who is your family? I’m not going to try to answer that question in any quotable or theological manner. I will say that I have a huge family (now.) But my home is with my own immediate circle of love: Peter and Philly our dog. They are my home. They are my heart. They are my family. We are at “home” in Pennsylvania.
Dorothy really did understand something at the end of her journey.
Dorothy: Well, I - I think that it - it wasn't enough to just want to see Uncle Henry and Auntie Em - and it's that - if I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with!
The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
But she had to journey first.
God, The Storyteller
You hear a lot of people talking about seasons these days. Especially in the Christian circuit ad nauseum. But there is truth to the outlook that some things are means for a “season”. I’ve written about it. And it’s a good thing to know where you are within that realm of thinking.
What I’ve come to realize is that our journey to Texas was, what I thought, for “good” but was for a good “season”. That season turned out to be two years. I thought I was going to go “home” to be hear family. God agreed- for his reasons - and expanded that family. Within six months I was able to see my mother more in a couple of months than I would in a whole year, relaxed without that pesky return ticket looming over our shoulders. And also, after a DNA test, unexpectedly meeting new family I didn’t know existed that miraculously (that’s what God does) lived in the same state, merely hours away. Only God can write that story.
Because of that miracle, Peter and I picked up stakes, once again, and moved to be closer to my (our) new family, My dad and his wife, so that I’d have a chance that I may never get again to get to know them. I know, it’s crazy! These things just don’t happen every day. And I can have a tendency to rush things but, “feet first”, here we go. I may never get this chance again.
Within a year of being back in Texas I’d met a new father and - miracle within a miracle - performed my one-woman show I’d written over fifteen years ago (about my father figures…with a <surprise!> a new ending. With my new father watching in the audience. There was so much, so much, healing happening on a cellular level.
There’ve been euphoric highs and intense lows. It’s been filled to the brim with great joy. It’s been emptied to the bottom with sadness, strife, and warfare I didn’t see coming or ever wish to know. It’s been peppered with rejection that I’d hoped would fade. But it didn’t. And I’m pretty confident it never will.
God’s ways are higher than ours
He only ever loves us. His miracles look like his miracles. They are not of your creation. They are his. Dorothy ends up happy at home but she still had the contend with a witch, flying monkeys and the man behind the curtain.
I have a huge new family. On one hand I have cousins who’ve thrown their arms open wide with invitation and love. On the other, I have half-siblings; none of them I will ever meet. The door is firmly shut - and locked. In fact, someone quipped publicly some nastiness about my very presence in the family and what all the hullabaloo was about this “one night fling” (and my being the result of said one night fling) fifty-five years ago, wondering why it’s worth any further attention. In essence, this is no one important, less than worthy of your time. Trash. She shouldn’t be here. (That to my knowledge wasn’t actually said but it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to receive the message.)
You may wonder how or why I even know any of this. I wonder that too. But it came out. God must really love me. That’s all I can come up with. He’s knows how much I hate lies. And secrets. Again, the highs have been close to the sun and the lows have been akin to something reminiscent of Dickensian villainy.
I think back to the miracle. The songs. The joy of it all. The love letter onstage to someone I barely knew while my mother had to sit through it and just watch knowing she’s the true warrior of it all but having to sit in quiet corner all the same while I write her story for a later date. Was it all just a honeymoon that’s over? Is it still a happy story? I mean everyone needs to get on with their lives. But does it have to be ugly? I remind myself: I didn’t reach out. I didn’t start this thing. I received the invitation. I was asked for further “proof”. I accepted slowly. Very slowly. It bears reminding.
Brokeness Will Be Broken
I am not filling you with a sob-story. I am simply stating the truth. I used to want to change this part of the story. Heart open. Faith and belief intact. Deciding not to share it for the sake of, well… now I wonder. Our broken mysteries are difficult to describe and, as a writer, you wonder what to divulge and what to keep quiet. But I get tired of protecting bad behavior. I realize these things said of me are not of the Lord because he loves me and He won’t have his daughter, forgive the term, “shat on”, and as my husband once stated, have nitro glycerin poured over her childhood abandonment wounds that have been healed over time. That has for a long time been in the long past so don’t invite trouble.
Are DNA tests advisable? You, no doubt, hear doubt in my voice. Well, I could also ask is the truth advisable? Sometimes the miracles that happen in your life aren’t about you at all. And that is what I’ve realized. A humbling realization. I thought this was by far all about a full circle for me. But it’s not. It’s about a full circle for a choice that was made a long time ago that had nothing to do with me. Ah, you can run, but you cannot hide. God wants us all with him one day in heaven and he loves us to much to allow us to lie to ourselves - even if we were stupid kids. Even if we say we forgot. Even if we say we didn’t thing it wrong. Even if we were stupid kids. Even if it was just a “fling”. It seems God takes “flings” rather seriously.
Sometimes the miracles that happen in your life aren’t about you at all.
These waters run too deep for individuals whose minds are stayed on worldly affairs, keeping up with the Joneses, and all things material. It isn’t worth trying to explain it to them. Let them go and shake the dust off your feet.
I’m long past the mistaken beliefs of being a “problem”. I’m a citizen of Heaven. However, this has all been a huge disruption in everyone’s lives. Some even who may never admit to it. There’s more for me. There’s more for my family. The grace has lifted. The favor has gone. It’s time to go and allow everyone’s norm to reset.
Everyone has a right to say what they’ll accept in their lives. Including these who share DNA with me. As do I. So as much as I have marveled in the miracle between my new Dad and I. It’s time to go. Not disappear. Not to go radio silent. And not to stop being a daughter. Just to go home.
No one is happy about our decision but us. There’s some trauma there with all of us. The trauma of loss and abandonment. My mother is very unhappy. My new Dad has stopped calling as much, using my first name coldly as if I’m a secretary getting coffee circa ‘75 when “kiddo” has been the moniker of choice for a year. Is this what conditional love tastes like?
I once reassured him I’d never use his name in my writing. I mean that, because I’d been writing my story a long time and the DNA story blew up. He laughed it off saying he didn’t care. Months later he mentioned out of the blue that he didn’t want me using his name, (he’s been thinking about it), and then rushed in with “It’s not to do with shame! Shame has nothing to do with it!” No, but we all have a reputation to keep and it must be hard at this late hour having the outer world know you have a bastard daughter.
My friend absolutely loses her sh&t when I use that term to describe myself. I don’t own it or believe that. Yes, it is ugly and untoward. Much worse than “fling” but gets the point that was being made. I know I’m a Queen, Baby. <snaps>
But it does make me think about how many times over the years and years of my blog where I’ve shown pictures of my mother’s face and name, told our story… and not once did she ever allude to keeping quiet about us. Because… family. Also understandably, she knew me better. She’d had the years. She was the one, she and my grandmother, left to carry me. And they did. Both of them. So excuse me if there’s a little part of me that does not feel the same protection over someone who wants the glory without the guts.
The Evils of Control
When you pray and the Lord sanctions something, even commands it, there’s nothing to do but act in obedience. You can’t control people’s lives or how they’ll feel about the choices you’re making. You can’t control how people respond to the lies the enemy consistently whispers in their ears about the things you do not think or even do. You cannot control the levels of spiritual maturity or lack thereof. You cannot control what people tell themselves or others about you because you made a decision that is for the best of your life, marriage, happiness and career. The desire to control others or to wield control as a barometer for love is one of the most evil forces alive.
But you can control how best to foster the joy and sanctity of your own family.
For Lent I’m saying The Serenity Prayer daily:
God grand me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Courage to change the things I can; And wisdom to know the difference. Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; Trusting that He will make all things right If I surrender to His Will; So that I may be reasonable happy in this life and supremely happy with Him Forever and ever in the next.
I realized todays entry has been a little darker than most. And the temptation is perhaps to think that because I share the areas where the glass is half empty, you’ll believe I only feel this now. That would be such a lie! It’s all part of a great story that only God will be able to fully realize for me one day when all this is in the long past. Until then, I have hope. I have love and I have forgiveness (yes, even to the “fling” flinger). And I will, in addition to the Serenity Prayer, where I focus on allowing others to do as they will as they allow me to do as I will, I will pray for my own forgiveness in areas of this story where I still feel the sting. For we are told, when you go up to the altar and realize your brother has something against you, be reconciled first… then present your gifts.
I know who my brothers and sisters are. They love me well. For the rest, I surrender them fully to God. It’s out of my hands. I forgive and turn around…time for a u-turn. A holy u-turn.
There’s the onramp.
Oh, Toto… there’s no place like home.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Is. 55 8-9)
Whoa. Let's talk and see each other's faces soon. You are a strong spirit, my friend. Love you.