In the lyrics of Kirk Franklin, “Pain was the plan.”I write for myself and the people around me who weren’t raised by their biological parent who is still out there somewhere just ghosting, swooping in and out of your life being toxic on the regular.

Have you ever thought that maybe God excluded that person for a reason?

Okay, hear me out.

I’ve blogged about destiny helpers before and we are going to use the same concept here. What if, your step parent or whoever stepped in to raise you was the destiny helper that God sent you to become the phenomenon that you are? It’s hard to fathom that God would separate a child from it’s parent but didn’t Moses float away in a basket? (The Bible can support anything TBH.)

Live and let die

I used to listen to Kelly Clarkson’s Piece by Piece (video at the end) and would ball my eyes out. Just sit there for hours just wallowing in the rejection and abandonment. Doing what girls do when they have Daddy Issues. And then one day, I just stopped. Stopped crying, stopped begging, stopped trying to be accepted into a family that was okay with me growing up without them. We live with what is and let die anything that is toxic and unhealthy. This year was the last Twitter DM I will ever send him to do right by me.

Your life’s goal is not to wallow over what wasn’t.

Whether you know or you don’t know the missing parent, it’s not your life’s goal to chase them. At some point you need to make peace with what never was and take control of your life. If you don’t make peace with that rejection and abandonment, it will run your life into the ground and you won’t recover. That brokenness will make decisions for you which aren’t healthy like the ‘Daddy Issues’ concept.

Looking back in retrospect

When I look at it now, it makes sense. I had the pleasure of being raised by a King until he passed away in 2015. When I met my biological father it paled in comparison. I had high expectations and we just went downhill from there. Let me put it in lyrical content, “I travelled 15 hundred miles to see you. Begged you to want me but you didn’t want to.” Kelly Clarkson has never penned a more relatable lyric. So now, knowing both men the way I do, it makes sense what the plan of God was. The biological one will tell you from his mouth that he ain’t all that as a parent. He isn’t lying. And the only father I actually had, gave me the experience of the greatest love I’ve ever known.

Most of the gifted kids I know have an absent parent.  There’s something about the situation that makes them more resilient and eager to succeed. Maybe it’s the idea of growing up knowing that there isn’t one-half of the parental structure and that you’re gonna have to give yourself everything you have ever wanted. I don’t know why it happens but it be like that sometimes.

Anyone who can go about their life without considering if their child has eaten, or how they are growing up is toxicity that your life can continue without. It sucks for the parent who stayed cause you bridled with guilt for not seeing ghosty for what ghosty was.

If you could choose between an abusive parent or an absent one, which one would you choose?