IF GOD IS MY FATHER HOW CAN HE LOVE ME?

by CELIA HADDON

BACK

As a child, did I even know that my father loved me? I think not. I was the second daughter and a sickly child. As he pointed out to me many times "You¹re the runt of the litter. We didn't think we'd raise you."

I knew about the litter runts. We kept pigs. The runt, the Tantony pig, the smallest and weakest of the litter, always went for slaughter. The better pigs, kept for a time to fatten them, might be kept for breeding. The runt never was. It is not surprising that I have no children. I was also a girl. They had already had one girl, my elder sister. A completely surplus second one, was not what they wanted. "Women!" said my father with scorn. "Give them a place to put down their handbag, and they'll be completely happy. You can get them doing any really boring job."

He did not like women in general and he disliked my mother in particular. As a child I knew that he despised me. I was a coward and a wimp and - his chosen term for me -- "the milksop of the family." I was terrified of horses and eventually refused to ride at all. This increased his contempt for me. Not only was I not a boy, I was not even a tomboy. Tears brought out the worst in him.

During the vicious family arguments round the dining table, I would sometimes burst into tears. "Here come the waterworks," he would sneer at the eight-year-old. "I'll hang two jam jars round your neck and see which fills up first."

I did not know then, as I know now, that he had been so hurt as a child, that the only way he could survive was to hurt others. I knew simply that a father was the last person to whom you confided unhappiness or showed sorrow. For if you did, instead of comfort came abuse. It was impossible to trust him for emotional support.

So I learned the main lesson of childhood well. Keep quiet. Do what you are told to do, however you may feel about it, and with luck nobody will notice you. Especially, I learned the vital survival lesson of emotional dishonesty. If you don't trust somebody, you don't tell them what is going on. In particular, you do not tell them if you are unhappy or angry. It is not safe to do so, since unhappiness will be met with unkindness and anger with an even greater anger. You pretend everything is all right. Better still, if you can, you pretend to yourself that everything is all right. I am my father's daughter not just in my ordinary life but in my spiritual life too.

If God is my father, how can He love me?