You Can’t Change Your Past, but You Can Change Your Future
I have told you the speech I give to my “sons,” but I also give a speech to my “daughters.” Instead of picking a few girls, as I do the guys, I usually select a whole row of them and have them stand together. Then I issue a blanket invitation that any of the girls in the room who want to be my daughter can stand, as well. The number of girls looking for a daddy is staggering! The “Daddy Speech” begins, and this one is a bit more boisterous than the first. Those of you with daughters will understand.
“You are my daughters. You need to know one thing above all else: Your daddy loves you! I will fight for you! I will hurt people for you, especially those punk little boys who come knocking at my door hoping for the privilege to take you on a date. When they come to the door to meet me, I will meet them, all right…as I clean my shotgun! If they take you to the movies, you can look over your shoulder and see Daddy. If that little punk wants to buy you popcorn, you can forget it! I’m the Daddy, and I’ll be buying the popcorn!”
They all laugh, but then they get eerily quiet at the next part. “No matter where you go, Daddy will find you! If you’re lost, Daddy won’t rest until you are safe. If you make your bed in hell, Daddy will break down the door and rescue you. No matter what happens, your daddy will always love you! Always.”
By now you can usually see tears streaming down a few pretty faces—faces longing for a daddy to tell them what I have told them. Faces stuck in abuse and neglect. Faces looking anywhere for love and acceptance when they should have already found it at home. Faces etched with their own harsh truths, yet still desperate for new truth.
Someone is speaking a message of love to the sons and daughters of the world. There is a Daddy who loves the babies. There is a Father who longs to hold them and protect them. There is healing for those who have faced the tragedies of life and love lost. There is hope, and there is a truth chipping away at the walls of hell to rescue you from the flames of rejection, hate and abuse.
I am pleading with a generation to hear a Daddy’s plea to hold on and wait. Whatever the truth of your life may be, do not use it to make a noose. Use it to make a rope to climb up and out of where you are. Don’t veg out, don’t cop out, don’t sit this one out! Don’t hypnotize yourself with the television in the hope that reality will just fade away. Face your truth so you can find the next step that leads you through.
***
Mom’s revelation to me that my parents were not actually my parents hit me like a sack of rocks. I began a journey of revelation that was far from what I had expected in my life. Over the following years and months, I began to learn the real story of the woman who did not want me as her son.
Her name was Vera, and she attended school on the north side of town in Knoxville. At the ripe old age of 14, she became pregnant with a little boy named Keith. He is my brother, although I have never met him, and I have no idea where he is or what his life is like. The young mother had Keith and kept him while still living with her parents.
Her story became more complicated when she became pregnant again the next year…with twins. She went home and told her parents the news. They were furious with her as the sun set on that, no doubt, impossible day. The next morning, she got up and went to school as usual, leaving her infant son in her parents’ care. When the school bell rang, Vera made her way back home carrying a bag full of books and a heart full of worry. Little did she know, her Tuesday was just beginning.
She climbed the front porch steps only to hear the screaming of her little boy inside. As she opened the door, she beheld the unthinkable: The house was completely empty, except for her little baby, crying desperately for his mama.
They had moved while she was at school. They took everything. Furniture. Food. Appliances. They even took Vera’s clothes with them. They left no note. No forwarding address. No hope. From that day forward, she never saw nor heard from her parents again.
Life had changed, and Vera was in way over her head. Pregnant. Unemployed. Single mother. Homeless. She found her way to a halfway house in Knoxville until her twins were born. She lived there until the twins were 3 months old. That was when the program director where they were living told her the rules of the home prohibited them from staying because the children were too old.
Vera’s options were simple — simple but not easy. She could either give up her children to the Department of Children’s Services and continue living at the home, or she could launch out on her own with her kids. She loved her kids. She decided to try it alone.
Someone helped her secure lodging at an old, abandoned farm on the outskirts of town. She took her precious babies and moved them into a chicken coop. No running water. No electricity. Her life was in trouble, but she faced it the best she could alone.
Her daily routine was extreme. She woke up every day at 2:30 a.m. and hauled her three children down the road to a local gas station. In the filthy bathroom of that convenience store, she bathed her little darlings and prepared them for the day. Then she continued on foot with her babies all the way to a local daycare, where she dropped them off. From there, she traipsed off to work at two different jobs as a waitress—back-to-back shifts in different restaurants.
With the miniscule amount of money she earned at her jobs, she paid her daycare bill. Daycare was her babies’ lifeline. There they had safety, shelter and food. She would swing by late in the evening, pick up her kids and take them back to the dilapidated chicken coop. Then at 2:30 the next morning, she would begin the entire process again. That was her existence.
Then, as often happens, she faced a season of sickness, no doubt exacerbated by her personal exhaustion and unhygienic living conditions. When she missed work, she lacked the money she needed to pay for her children’s daycare. No daycare would mean no food or shelter for the kids and no babysitters so she could work. Her budget was so tight that the whole process hinged on a mere $20 — $20 was the price of her babies’ survival.
Vera was desperate. She began seeking options, but none presented themselves. Finally, she revealed her dilemma to a male “friend.” He presented her with an option.
As I pause to reflect on the story as told to me by my foster mother, I realize my story is exclusively mine. However, its theme encompasses the lives of millions. It is about identity. Value. My millions of daughters across the world are desperate to find their own value; because for some cruel reason, no one has bothered to tell them. Naomi certainly did not understand hers at first. I was about to learn the extent of my own.
My mother’s “friend” told her he would give her the $20 she needed to feed her babies if she would sleep with him. She was desperate. She was needy. She was an easy target. She was trapped by her circumstances; and this low-life, bottom-feeder preyed upon her, exploiting her situation. She accepted his indecent proposal and slept with him.
So as you can see, I discovered early on what Tuesday is all about. I learned what the world thinks about my value. That bottom-feeder was my father, though I have never met him. I am the son of a desperate, unwitting prostitute, who slept with a low-life man for $20 to feed her babies. You think you have no worth? My life began at the price of two $10s. How’s that for value?
My story was beginning to take shape. The truth did not seem very liberating when it first broke down the door of my emotions. It did not thrill me or make me more excited to face the next day. No, it wounded me; but it was a necessary wound, like an area of the body that has been prepped for surgery. It hurt, but the hurt was preparing me for healing.
The truth is, I needed the truth. The truth is, so do you. Tuesday is the true reality of where we live. Now that you have faced it, there is nowhere to go from here but up. It is time to move on. Let’s go there together.
