Its not easy for me to be honest with people most of the time, not that I want to be a liar, and not that I don’t want to be honest with them – I call it lying when we tiptoe around the truth instead of just speaking it. In this post I will reveal what I’m actually thinking about .. trust me when I say that I rarely share anything with anyone in any real way. I’m not saying my previous posts are fake, I’m saying that I’ve redacted personal vulnerability from them because it is not natural for me to allow that.. if someone allowing other people into their heart is equivalent to an eat-in diner, mine is drive-thru only.

This is just an explanation of how things have come to be… most people know their family history, they are intimately familiar with their “real” mother and father, of who they are, their history is readily available to them, and they mature and develop with a strong sense of identity and they build their life, brick by metaphorical brick on that initial foundation.

Most of my boyish thoughts growing up was wondering about who my biological family was, their names, history, origin, what was my mom & dad like, etc… I can’t really describe in words how much pain not knowing the answer to those questions brought into my life.

I grew up worried that I was going to be taken away again, it became so bad that I couldn’t stand to be alone, not at all because I was afraid to be by myself when I was a child, I was afraid that they wouldn’t come back. Every trip to the red square at Clearspring mall (where I would constantly walk on my hands) was centered on making sure they didn’t go home without me, one of my biggest fears was being left as I didn’t know why it happened (in my original family and foster home) in the first place. I didn’t want to give my adoptive mother a hug, I didn’t trust her. I expected at any given time, that now the moment had come, and they would be gone… I didn’t trust anyone expect my Grandpa Janz, he had a quiet spirit about him, I just knew that I could trust him. There are other reasons beyond abandonment that messed me up, lets just leave it at that.

This is not about blame or pity, the truth is I learned to divorce myself from my emotions at a very early age, to such a degree that there are times that I catch myself being completely emotionally shutdown, having no regard for other people, what they think, what they say, or how I’ve hurt them – its not personal but that’s the entire problem. In those moments I see how far away I am from being anything close to normal. There is something I never developed, a tangible link or bond towards people – I can’t quite put my finger on what I’d call it, but whatever it is – I don’t have it, it has been that way as long as I can remember.

I try to make up for who I am by being as helpful as I can to the people I work with, helping strangers, and sometimes I do have concern for people if they are in a specific type of danger or trouble. Having developed this way, I’ve become very good with tools, physical objects, what I could never do with my heart, I do instead with my hands.

I’ve worked very hard on myself, trying to bring walls down… focusing on other people, has healed a lot of scars, its like a very little piece of me becomes alive again, I need that desperately.

The reason I’m writing this post at all is because of my father, my real father… I didn’t meet him until I was 50 years old and it has been a huge battle for me to open up my heart to that man. He has been absent from most of my life, I’m not here to throw stones at him – its just that he has made it very hard for me to give this guy another chance when every instinct I have tells me that I’m going to be hurt. Most people just ask for my help – which I give freely, my dad is asking me for something else, he is asking me (in his own way) to care, to forgive, to be vulnerable.

People can think what they want of me… they have no idea how far I’ve had to come just to get to where I am now; to give trust to a man that has never earned it, open my heart when I’ve kept it firmly shut, to give love as Jesus has commanded us when I just can’t stand to get hurt again. He called me today to say I’m all he has left in this world, not a joke but that is kind of a sad thought :). There is no way that I can say no to him, it isn’t right, that is not who I want to be, no matter what has happened in our past.

So why am I saying those things now, and here? Well, I don’t want to plaster this all over Facebook, I don’t need or want sympathy likes. As part of my healing, there are things I need to say, venom needs to be leached or it will continue to poison me. But I also need prayer, real prayer.. I need strength and very real help.. I don’t want to talk about it (not in anyway) with anyone, but if you feel like you can say a prayer for my dad, and for me; I would appreciate it. The kind of help I need is prayer to give me the strength to accept my father back into my life again, and for my dad; I need to forgive him, I want the best for him. We all want redemption at some point, I don’t have the heart to withhold it from my father, I just don’t know how I’m going to do this.

Jason