Brave words: I need you (@ Chronicles of Grace)

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I didn't let him see me cry, those precious few minutes each Sunday afternoon I sat with glass between us and talked to him through a phone.  He wore an orange jumpsuit and I couldn't get over how broken he looked, no longer the Papa I knew who wore colorful ties and stood each Sunday before the church to preach and told jokes and laughed from his belly. 

I looked into his eyes and saw rivers of sadness and shame and hid my pain away, these nine months of Sundays, because I couldn't bear to show him mine.  At home in my room, I pulled down the shoe box filled with folded yellow letters in Papa's careful script and wept for the dad I couldn't admit I needed. 
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

It's one of those parts of me I can't trace back to a specific place or event in time, only that it's as if I were born with an innate self-moderating device which gagged my voice, made me shrink back from needing.


I'm honored to have been invited to guest post at my friend Kelli's place today, for a series this month on "Brave words" - so will you join me there for the rest of this story? 

Thank you, from my heart.