Reflections of a Broken Past

  There are a couple of posts that I have been considering writing.  However, yesterday would have been my Dad's 75th birthday, had he taken care of himself better, and I think this one is the most pressing.  There are certain days that I will remember on my death bed and that is one of them.  At about 3am my phone rang, I figured it was just one of my drunk friends so I ignored it and let them leave a message.  That morning my wife (she was a girlfriend at that time) was up before me.  After listening to the message she woke me up and told me that I needed to call my brother.  I got out of bed and before I could listen to it the phone rang and it was my brother again.  He said, in a voice shaking so bad that I could hardly understand him, "I don't know how to tell you this buddy.  Dad's dead." 
   Yesterday I reflected that in church and even wiped away a few tears.  My father was an unrequited atheist and I often wonder what he would think of me now.  A part of me also realizes that I wouldn't be where I am now if he were still here.  It took Dad's death for me to grow up, I think.  I no longer lived my life to try and fit in with him, I lived it the way I felt it should be lived.  You see, my father was a bit of an icon around here, he even had an article in the paper talking out his contributions of his favorite hobbies, hunting and fly-fishing after he passed.  The trouble was, that didn't carry over to home all that well.  He never really respected me or my mother, he lied frequently, and was a general nasty person much of the time.
   Last night Easter service came back to me and I understood what it meant to die and be reborn in Christ.  I had another life, one that will, at times, haunt me forever.  That person died, however, on the 20th of December, 2011 (another of those days I will remember forever).  Out of that resurrection I found who I want to be.  Am I that person always?  No.  I am a broken man in a broken vessel.  I will never gain perfection but I am much closer to being a righteous man that I was at this time last year.  Unlike my Dad I was always a believer in God.  I just hated Him, and in doing so I hated myself.  In some ways I think that was worse that not believing at all.  Instead of just being hollow I was purposefully filling myself with wickedness.  I was so scared of what God was constantly telling me to believe that I rebelled against it.  I hated it.  I was angry about it.  No matter how much God spoke to me, and it was a lot, I had hardened myself to the point where I could no longer hear.  Luckily I finally died and was reborn.  If my Dad were here to see me now...