The Father's Love

I have been trying to wrap my head around all that was summer conference to compose a coherent post about all that I thought and felt. Well, at least the important stuff. I gave up. I do not think that I can completely wrap my head around everything.

The theme of the conference was "The Father's Love." I knew that this conference could be hard with all of my father issues. Brief explanation: I didn't really have a dad growing up. Well, I was right. Some of the topics were hard to swallow simply because I had a very distorted view of fatherhood due to my earthly father being a bad example of fatherhood.

One session was particularly difficult. The session itself wasn't too bad. I really absorbed a lot during it and wasn't emotional or distant. At the end, the pastor came up and began to pray. All of the sudden he began to pray "He is father to the fatherless" and I lost it. I began to weep at the thought. I had known this much of my life and really embraced it in high school, but for some reason it never really sunk in that I was fatherless. I had a dad, he was just a deadbeat dad. But I was, and am, fatherless.

As he prayed, I began to really feel the weight of all that was being dredged up. I just cried. I went up and got prayer, but it wasn't super helpful or relevant to what I was going through. So some friends who know my situation were going to pray for me later, long story short it didn't work out.

The next session was up and here I am still dealing with, well more or less suppressing, all that had been dredged up. So we went on with the next session and I sat, listened, and absorbed. Then, prayer time. This time he asked people who struggle with comparisons to come up. Well, thats me, again. I began to think God was messing with me, Gee thanks God way to dredge up all my deep seeded insecurities. I head up, praying that God will speak through someone more clearly than before. I wait. Then a hand on my shoulder and Emi begins praying for me. Thanks, God for sending someone I know. Let me tell you, I have only ugly cried once during prayer. Well, now I have twice.

I could go through the whole experience, but this blog is getting pretty long, so I will make it short. Basically, God really got to me about being his daughter, being worthy, and being precious in His sight. I really felt the Holy Spirit moving and just stirring up this realization that I am precious in His sight. Later in the conference I was praying and got this image of me as a young girl walking with God, father God looking as fatherly as you would expect, and as we walked we talked and laughed and he reminded me of how precious I was to him. It was this beautiful image of fatherhood and my role as a daughter with a father who loves and cares for me.

Father God loves us deeply and we often forget just how precious we are to Him. Since conference the word precious has really stuck with me. I was also able to let go of some bitterness and anger towards others that I had been holding onto. All of that to say that conference was so good, so impacting, and perception changing.