Thankful Thursday: Finding Peace

Holy smokes! I'm not even sure where to begin with being thankful right now. My mind is....blown. I had an entire list of things to share in mind, but one little thing changed that. So, I'm still linking up with Rebecca Jo for Thankful Thursday but I just have that one thing to share.

I got a letter from my biological father today. It's kind of a big, freaking deal. If you've been around to follow the story, you know that I never knew him or even anything about him until just about one year ago. That's when my son got the results of his Ancestry.com DNA test and the names of 2 Ancestry members that were his genetic first cousins. I took the name to my mom and after 54 years she finally told me the name of my father and what little she knew about him. My son asked if I wanted him to contact the cousins whose names he was given. I said no, because I didn't know what they knew or if they knew anything. I didn't want to mess up their lives or family. I figured we'd deal with it if they ever contacted him.

Fast forward to the beginning of August. My mom came to the house one afternoon and handed me a letter she had just received. It was from a woman who said she was the daughter of my father and she and my brothers had just found out about my existence a couple of months before that. They had been digging around on the internet ever since trying to find me. They contacted Mom because they didn't know what or if I knew. (Like minds?)

Mom and I called my sister on our birthday in August and talked to her for about 10 minutes. A few weeks later I wrote a letter. We've been writing ever since. We met for lunch last month when she was on her way to see our father. She told me she had given my address to our father.....so I knew it was possible I'd hear from him some day.

I just wasn't expecting it to be today.

He stated more than once that it was the most difficult letter he'd ever written. Other than it being to me, I can't see what was so hard. The first page was about family health history. The second page was all about his childhood, teen years, college years, and all his exploits. He finally got to "somehow" meeting my mom and claimed that while he'd dated "lots" of ladies from high school on, my mom was his first intimate relationship. He said he was "too callous to recognize" my mom's "potential." He broke up with her before they knew about the pregnancy. 

He ended the letter by saying that he's felt bad about it ever since and regretted any hardship I'd endured because of him. Oh, and P.S...If I want to meet face to face we can...when he gets back to this state in May of next year. He's 81 and has a pacemaker.

Anyway, what I'm thankful about is that after 55 years I read this letter and felt NOTHING. He came across as self-centered even now. Not once did he ask anything about me or my family. Nor did he say he wanted to meet me. He just said he would do it if I wanted to. It obviously doesn't matter either way to him.

I am finally free. He doesn't hold the power to hurt me any longer and for that I am very, very thankful.

* By the way, I do plan to see him when he comes back. I'm not terribly interested, but I don't want to have any regrets or be haunted by "what-ifs."