Hole in the Soul – A Work in Progress [WIP]

You'll always be my daddy

I'll always be your son.

Here I am, a grown ass man, and I don't know what that means.

I look to God and call Him Father,

But all that I know about fathers comes from you.

And I never knew you.

Oh, you were around while growing up.

You came through, ready to hang out, be my friend.

You always had jokes or a dirty magazine

Or a cigarette or a drink to share

–yeah, you were a Kools and Crown and Coke man.

My friends thought you were the coolest dad on the block

But the block had you more than we did.

And I wasn't looking for a friend.

Daddy just lift me up.

All I ever wanted was for you to hold me and claim me as yours.

Daddy lift me up.

Bloodshot eyes, liquor on your breath

I swallow his thoughts of me and slowly starve

Fathers and sons full of mystery and history.

How can he love someone like me.

I can hear the disappointment in his voice

Up on the auction block of my childhood.

I'm not that smart, not that funny, certainly not the life of the party like he was.

A depressed mess, too dark and left behind.

A hypocrite like me.  A sinner like me.  A me like me.

What I think when I think of God my Father

Is that He's supposed to be distant

To come around when He feels like it

To make me laugh during the good times

But never around when times got hard.

He might peel me off a twenty

Maybe throw a blessing my way to make up for His absence.

But it wasn't like I could count on Him.

Or know Him.

So now I'm not that anxious to get to know that Father.

To believe that He loves me for me

To believe that He considers me valuable simply because I'm me.

Daddy just lift me up.

All I ever wanted was for you to get to know me

and show that you actually like having me around

Daddy lift me up.

The idea of being daddy scares me.

A father's fears consoling a little boy's tears

I don't know if I want that burden

Of revealing God to my own children

To be a reflection of our true Father

I don't know if I have enough love to give

Or if I'm brave enough to let them into my heart

To know what love I have

To know and be known

To risk being a Daddy

I want to go to all of their recitals, knowing that they'll suck

And cheer them anyway.

I want to be able to enter their world

Learn who they are and help shape them into the best them they can be.

I never want to be too tired to play catch or be there to talk

I never want to leave them with a hole where their Father should be.

A father's lies.  A Father's cries.

Shedding a Father's tears.

Proud.

For who you are.  Who you can be.

Father just lift me up

All I ever wanted is to love and be loved the way I knew you would want me to

Perfect love drives out fear.

Father, lift me up.