Onward

Loss. That’s been a theme in my life. A painful one.

The loss of my Dad was like getting a left hook from Tommy Morrison in my 20’s. For an entire decade, I struggled to find my feet and make the final turn into manhood.

Now that they’re in the rearview mirror, I’m able to better articulate the level of pain that I experienced was; it was the feeling of being lost, paired with the reality of being lost; swirled around in a cocktail shaker and poured straight down my throat.

My god, those years were painful.

When an infant sticks their hand in a burning pan of popcorn oil, it startles them for but a moment – yet, they scream, because the ensuing reaction is long, drawn-out and painful.

When a young man loses his Dad to a terminal illness, it shocks him for a brief moment – and he screams inside for many years because the ensuing reaction is long, drawn-out and painful.

I was both infant and young man.

Now, I’m a man.

A lot of times, Happily Ever After happens for these men. It didn’t happen for me.

If Tommy Morrison gave me a left hook in my 20’s, Mike Tyson threw another – and bit my ear off – in my 30’s.

Loss. Oh, that bitter pill. She struck again.

My Fatherless behavior resulted in becoming one. I thought I had seen Hell, up until that point of my life. Little did I know that my 20’s were the tip of the spear for what I endured.

In four years, I’ve rarely written about that chapter of my life; it was the darkest hell I ever could have imagined – torture in every way possible.

Fall seven times – stand up eight.

Of all the demons I’ve faced in my life, every single one of them has bowed down to the name of Jesus, and that’s who pulled me out of the living Hell I was in for several years.

While being lifted out of a dark place, it’s a daily battle for me to push through the battlefield that I call ‘life as a single Dad’.

Yet, he persisted.