When Your Father Abandons You

I am in tears as I write this.

Pope Francis' homily today has taken the rusted knife already stabbed into my side from these sex scandals overhauling the Church and has twisted it, all while he begs relief from accusations and places yet another layer of blame on the victims.

So today I ask myself, what do you do when your father abandons you?

What do you do when the only earthly embodiment of a paternal figure you have ever had has turned on you, a sex assault victim, and has left you out in the cold?

What do you do when the last safe place you had has turned into the very hell and nightmare you have fled?

You scream.

You curse.

You demand better of God, because He is the only One Who can provide it.

You flip Him off, shouting and sobbing until your lungs are sore that you can't take any more hurt. You can't take any more reminder that you are a burden on those who violated you, both by their actions and by their standing by and watching, simply because you are a victim.

You tell Him that you want to die.

You tell Him this is His fault. It is His fault for letting us know Him. It is His fault for giving us the freedom to know Him and still beat Him, betray Him, lie to Him, strip Him raw, tear the veins from His limbs, squeeze out the last of His blood onto our hands.

It is His fault for giving us the capacity to love, and that the only way to love is to be vulnerable. And by being vulnerable, we are ample targets for the worst of pain, torment, degradation, and sorrow.

You don't want to remember the beauty you've known. You don't want to find comfort in the arms of a lover, a friend, a cold floor at the foot of a tabernacle, because comfort is not resolution. But without consolation, the pain will burn you out until you are nothing but a husk of what you used to be.

How did people do this before?

How did they wait for Your entrance in that homely stable, in the shaking arms of a new mother, in the cold of a nameless night, abandoned, hunted, hated?

How did they wait those three sun falls, those three black dusks, dark with the dried blood of sacrifice, pounding their hands on the stone wall of the tomb, demanding better of what was given them, having expected the world of the World?

The blisters from that sunrise seared the trickles of water on their parched lips, and stole from their skin the moisture that kept their vitality flowing. That sunrise, that gave meaning to all sunrises, warmed the cold of those who loved Him, and cautarized the sustenance of those who hated Him.

What do you do when your father abandons you?

You wait for the sun, and the fury of flames of both righteousness and justice that will follow it. And you wait for the eternal Embrace of the One, True Father Who is still miraculously there in your heart, stroking your back as you weep your heart out and beg for His eternity to envelope you away from the cruelty of the world.