“It’s your choice.”

He’s said it every one of the few times I’ve talked to him.

It’s my choice. Whether or not we have a relationship. Whether or not I choose to believe the lies. Whether or not I “accept” the life he’s chosen. Whether or not I “take his side” in a battle in which we were all once on the same side–until one person chose to leave the ranks and create his own. A mutiny of sorts. Against his own family… against the woman to whom he’d become one… and against the two who are his own flesh and blood.

He tells me it’s my choice. He tells my brother it’s his choice. He tells my mom–often–that it’s her choice.

But it’s his choice. We all know this in our heads. Most of the time we know it in our hearts. It’s the times we don’t that we find ourselves drowning.

He’s my father. He was my daddy. My hero. My big strong fireman in shining turnouts. The one who rubbed the bridge of my nose to put me to sleep when I was a baby, and taught me to do the same to my own babies. When I was growing up and he’d come home from his 24-hour shifts, we’d all greet him at the door and it was my job to take his black bag and put it back in his room, next to his side of the bed. When I was in elementary school we would wake up early on his days off and go for little mountain bike rides together. We were going to start our own guided mountain bike tour business for families–he’d be in charge of the adults and I’d guide the children. We even made business cards on that first old internet-less Mac computer. He liked grilling in the summer. Making food as flavorful as possible was his specialty. He liked two or three ice cubes in his milk with dinner. He could sit for hours listening to me practice my piano, and loved the sound of me stumbling through a new piece, gaining little bits of victory with each measure. Last summer he told me to never visit without bringing music because he missed hearing me play. He literally spent hours and hours knelt by my bedside, talking with me through my teenage drama. Hands folded under his chin, elbows on the bed, always ending with a bemused and caring smile, saying, “Well, Squirt, let’s pray.” He cried every time he watched Little House on the Prairie or The Waltons. He called me “Squirty” for as far back as I could remember, and rarely called me anything else.

Yes, I know. It sounds like I’m writing a eulogy. I know things have been a bit morose around here–when I’m even actually here. But you all know I can’t be anything but real.

I don’t know if it’s the fact that, as of this week, it’s been six months since the last time I saw the man I called my Daddy. Yes, I did see him one horrible day in December and again the night he packed up his stuff and… left… but that wasn’t my dad. Not the dad I’ve known my whole life. I don’t know if it’s the fact that yesterday would have been my grandma’s birthday–his mother, who would be skinning her son alive if she knew what he’s doing. It’s probably largely tied to watching him kill my mom’s heart a little more every day. Maybe it’s that I’m just weary, so weary, of dealing with this and similar situations.

But it hit me hard this past week. I’m talking hard. The kind of hard that had me crying, sobbing, every day, multiple times a day as the week wore on. I was still moving, still going on with normal life at a million miles an hour and running in circles like a headless chicken. It’s just that my eyelids were so swollen on Sunday morning that I contemplated just foregoing the whole eyeliner and mascara thing altogether. (I didn’t do it, though. At least my vanity is still intact, eh?)

Then yesterday, eyeliner in place and plenty of foundation to hide the eye bags, I drove to church and made my way to the choir practice room. We were doing a new song to open the service and since (all excuses aside) I was just plain flakey and didn’t go to practice last week, I needed some music. I glanced at the title.

Blessed Be Your Name.

New song? To me? Not so much.

I was regretting the eyeliner by the time we got halfway through the song.

Blessed Be Your Name
In the land that is plentiful
Where Your streams of abundance flow
Blessed be Your name

That part is easy, Lord. That was my life. It was good… so good. So idyllic.

Blessed be Your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there’s pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name

There is pain in this offering, Lord. How do I praise Your name through this tearing away of the foundations? This extreme ugliness?

You give and take away.
You give and take away.
My heart will choose to say,
Blessed be your name.

Then we pulled out the actual choir special. It was a song we’d done for Easter, very dramatic and full of power. I’ve probably sung these words seventy-five times in practice by now, but this seventy-sixth time, I finally listened to them.

We choose to bow
We choose to sing
We choose to crown You the King of Kings
We are not God
We say out loud
Only to You do we choose to bow

Choosing. My choice. Choose to bow. Choose to praise. Choose to say, “Blessed be Your glorious name!”

John and I teach our boys to obey all the way, right away, and with a happy heart. No, they don’t always do it. When they don’t, we tell them to go back and start over. Choose to obey with the right attitude. Obedience comes first… sometimes the heart just follows at a greater distance than other times. But it’s a choice.

My dad is right. I do have a choice here. It’s definitely not the choice he’s looking for–I’m not choosing to succumb to the manipulation, the lies, or an acceptance of this life. I do know this is the choice my Almighty, All-knowing God desires.

It’s with yet more tears splashing my keyboard I say…

Though there’s pain in the offering

My heart will choose to say

Blessed be Your name.

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