What If My Dad Loved Me This Way? A Higher Perspective on Pain

This is the second blog in a two-part series. In part 1, you got to read about the truth that came from my human heart as I reflected on my relationship with my father in one moment in time. Here, you’ll find the Divine consciousness perspective that followed. Part 1 says: this hurt me; part two says: And now I see something else. Both are honest. Both are true. Maybe when we allow ourselves to see it both ways, we get to transform and let go as we walk across that bridge. 

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I wrote my last publication about my father. It was deeply personal. It was honest. 

I shared a story about a time I witnessed a woman interacting with her own father while waiting in line at the airport to board my flight. In that moment I recognized that an interaction between a father and daughter that seemed so ordinary to them, was not ordinary to me. The loving dynamic they shared was unfamiliar. It caused me to stop and reflect on the dynamic I shared with my own dad along with the one that has never been a part of my ordinary life. 

After losing connection with my dad, I wrote him a letter on Father’s Day that I never sent. Instead, I shared the letter in that last publication. 

Since writing that letter my perspective changed. I changed. What I wrote in the last publication came from the point of view of who I was at the time I wrote it. Now she seems like a character in a book I’ll eventually write, and I’m grateful for her. I have a different point of view now and that’s what I’ll share here: a Higher point of view.

We so often make our experiences, especially those that are painful, mean something about us, our worthiness, and our value. We personalize the painful experiences to the extreme. We identify with them long after they’re in the past. We create stories around them. 

“Why?” we’ll ask. “Why me? Why did this happen to me? Why did they do this to me?”

We’ll ask countless questions as we dive deeper into the painful and traumatic experiences this lifetime presented us with, hoping along the way we’ll get whatever it is we think we’re searching for. Is it justice? Revenge? Apologies? Forgiveness? Healing? Freedom? Love? 

I think we set out with the best of intentions. So I’m not saying any of us are wrong. I’m not saying that those questions don’t have their time and place. They do.

But maybe there comes a point when it’s time to grow beyond that level of questioning. 

When we reach that time in our journeys, maybe there are different questions we need to ask to help us understand the painful experiences from a different perspective. 

What if before my dad and I ever came into this lifetime, this is what we chose?

What if we chose to have the exact dynamic that we always had, and the one we have now?

What if what I observed as normal for another woman and her father was normal for them and instead of seeing that contrast and assuming my relationship and dynamic with my father is abnormal or wrong, what if it’s just different? What if it’s exactly right? What if it is normal, normal for us because this is what we planned, and so it just is what it is? 

Instead of comparing my experience to someone else’s, what if I asked: why is my dynamic and relationship with my father what it is? 

Perhaps it is what it is because no matter what experiences I had, no matter what choices he and I made, it was always going to be exactly what it was, and exactly what it still is today. 

What if before we ever became father and daughter, my dad agreed to all of this, and I agreed to all of this?

What if my dad agreed to be the way he is to help me and challenge me, so that I got the opportunity to grow in the way I need to grow? 

What if my dad loves me so much that a long time ago, he promised to be the way he is in human form? 

Maybe we planned for him to challenge me in precisely the way I was and am challenged because he loves me that much on a soul level? 

Looking back now, these things have recently come to my attention. And when I approach our relationship from this perspective, it all makes perfect sense. 

Instead of carrying pain like a heavy backpack that I don’t need to carry, I can look at things differently now. Maybe I was looking at everything from the wrong angle all along, and maybe the angle I needed to look at it from was: this is what we always planned. It’s going exactly the way it was always going to go. Then and now. It’s going perfectly because we loved each other enough to know that we could play these roles, have the dynamic we have, and we would give each just the right challenges to grow in the way we both needed to…the caveat being that we would have to use our own free will to choose the path of growth, or not. 

Now instead of wondering, like I was doing in the last publication, I can be grateful. I am thankful knowing that despite a lack of human connection, we share a deeper soulful connection. And that’s the connection that can never be broken and is only love. Now instead of being hurt, instead of wondering all the things I wondered that maybe I don’t ever need to understand, I am grateful. 

I am grateful that my dad was gracious and loving enough to choose to say yes: yes to challenging me, yes to being a dad even though his wasn’t around long enough to show him how to be one, yes to being emotionally unavailable, yes to being gone a lot when I was growing up, yes to being disconnected from himself, yes to being unhappy, yes to helping create the f*cked up but perfect family we have, yes to giving me the memories of him singing “Caribbean Queen” by Billy Ocean in his car, yes to helping me look for the end of the rainbow only to find a hot air balloon landing, yes to being my dad and loving me in his own unique way, and yes to the dynamic we have. I’m grateful. I’m overjoyed. And no matter how we planned to do this life together, or what we have planned for the rest of it, I love him. 

What if we knew that the painful experiences we carry and often identify with were just a natural and normal part of the human life we planned to help us remember who and what we really are when we let it all go? Maybe the pain was a part of the Divine plan. Maybe the people who help us experience pain love us so much they were willing to play those roles in this human experience. Maybe all along love and pain were working together to help us remember that we are not the painful experiences, we are something so much more and so much bigger than that, something untouchable and unharmable that is already whole and complete. Maybe what we really are is love waiting to be found when we put the backpack down. 

I hope we all remember. 

If this piece spoke to something in you, I’d love to stay connected.

My writing explores the intersection of the raw, honest human experience and the Higher perspective that can sometimes help us see our lives differently. I share new writing, reflections, and what I’m discovering along the way through my newsletter.

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Disclaimer

This content is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice.