Life is Real . Letter To My (adult) Daughters With Love

Dearest, let me start off by saying that life is real. It’s not an abstract. It is real. It is real because your pain is real. The pain you feel is yours and no one else. You can’t describe it to anyone better. No one is able to understand it better than you. Visceral pain is visceral you. You know where it hurts. You know how long it hurts. You know how deep it hurts. That’s why life can be painful. It is painful because it is real.

No one can describe how you feel. Most times, they don’t have the faintest idea. Bless their darling hearts, but even your loved ones, your husband will run out of words. For words at times scratch no further than the surface. For what they claim they know about your pain doesn’t even come close. Your pain is yours to own. It’s yours to keep. It’s the price you pay, my dear, for the life you live.

There Is No Escaping

And when it comes, and trust me it will, don’t brush it aside. Don’t dismiss it. Don’t pretend it’s not there. It does not disappear just because you wish it away. Your denial of it doesn’t make it vanish into thin air. You can’t escape from what is essentially you. For wherever you go, you carry you with you.

Eventually, your pain demands your attention because your response to it counts. And it counts because it does not come empty handed. There is always a message in your pain. The message is made just for you, for that occasion, for that trial, for that valley. Its design has your name on it. Its key has your DNA in it.

My love, you may bear your pain with a heavy heart, but it is not there to torment you. It is not there to overwhelm your heart. It only seeks an honest dialogue, pleading for a solitary moment with you. So don’t make it your foe when it desires to reach out as a friend, a valley companion.

Life Is Real

I will not deny that your pain will hurt. Like a knife, it cuts. Like fire, it burns. Your initial reaction is expected, even at times justified. My dear, you are human after all. Your father understands that much. For your stolid face cannot hide the bleeding heart for long. But when you join your heart with pain, you must go beyond the hurts, beyond the grief, beyond the disappointment, even the resignation. Like day and night, like the sun’s rising and setting, it is always darkest just before a new day breaks.

Pain Is Like Four Seasons

My love, pain is like four seasons. None of them is meant to last longer than it should. They are messengers for a purpose. If you like, you can think of them as relay runners, passing the baton, focusing on completing the race.

The first runner carries the baton to wake you up. You need to self-confront and self-evaluate; for an unexamined life is indeed not worth much. The second runner carries the baton that cries with you. So, don’t fight it. You need to let it go. Recall valley companion? The third runner’s baton is about hope. You need to lift yourself up. You need to rise above your circumstances. And my dearest, the last baton, you never let go until you finish the race. It is the baton of joy and contentment. It is the fuel you need to run with purpose. That, I believe, is pain’s goal; it is its whole message.

Rise Above Your Circumstances

So, sweetheart, pain serves its purpose and leaves. It runs that season of your life and goes. It is not meant to stay for longer than it should. It is not designed to overstay. But, whether it stays or goes depends very much on you. Do you make pain a friend or a foe? And when it comes, do you examine your life and move on? In other words, do you rise above your circumstances with hope or turn a season into a lifetime of despair and never leave it transformed?

Its About The Journey

My dear, don’t live in the shadow of pain and never have the courage to step into its light. Its season changes when you take the leap of faith. Make your pain a soul-searching journey and not a soul crushing one. Join pain in this journey of self-discovery and strengthen your heart with enduring healing.

If I should rest my pen now, my love, I should tell you that daddy is a Christian. Yes, I know, that word has been used and abused too many times in your life. But let me leave you with a life that ought to disabuse you of all that. Let daddy Ieave you with one word: Gethsemane.

Gethsemane

In Hebrew, it means oil press. In Aramaic, it refers to a place on a hillside covered with olive trees. At a time before his total surrender, Jesus told his disciples that his soul is sorrowful unto death. He knew what pain was, he knew it with shuddering horror. At that time, he wasn’t courting death. He was instead courting love. And love called him to the ultimate sacrifice.

It was in Gethsemane my dearest that you will witness the darkest of one’s soul, its pitch blackness before dawn. Crushed by grief, Jesus threw himself onto the ground and prayed and bled. His prayer revealed the message in his pain and grief. “Father, if possible remove this cup from me, yet, not what I want, but what you want. ”Mind you, it was not by virtue of Jesus’ divinity that he overcame. No miracle however great could remove the cup from him. It was however an overcoming embodied in his humanity, and pursued in obedience and love that he stepped into the light and confronted the Cross, where he faced his fear and pain.

Life Is Real , So Too is Your Pain

So my love, life is real. So too is your pain. And in your pain, there’s always a message. The message is a call to Gethsemane. A call to struggle. A call to obedience. A call to surrender. And a call to overcoming. For you can never extract the oil from the olive without pressing and crushing it until its fragrance is finally released. And when released, it becomes a blessings to all, especially your own children – as you are, and have always been, to me.

Love daddy, always.

Ps: a message in a bottle floating in a sea of pain. Open and read it, and allow your broken heart to go through the seasons of change to find your desired peace from the sun and joy from the rain.