Kindness

Kindness.  As a spiritual person, I want to embrace this in my life and share it with others.  And I have a person who I know needs it.  Dad.  Yes, I get that I wrote about him yesterday and how much he is frustrating me at the moment.  For the longest time in my life I have felt like so much about him is a “lost cause”.  Not that he has been helpless, but I acknowledge that I don’t have what he needs ultimately.  I’m not even really sure what that is.  I couldn’t say that all he needs is a relationship with God, because I am not sure exactly what God would do for him.  He is an atheist and seems very afraid of all of that.  He surrounds himself with prickly ways, and it’s difficult to get close to him.  I wonder who is beyond all those facades though.

The question is how do embrace kindness into my life.  Colossians suggests that I should clothe myself in kindness, which is kind of ironic, because it is my clothing and my outward appearance that I feel I have to hide from dad.  I have hid who I am internally from him for years.  When I first arrived back in Australia in 1989, he told me that he didn’t want to see any evidence of my Christianity around the house which I get is fair enough.  It’s difficult and challenging to share with him though when he is so anti spiritual.  And he can’t be told.  He is not ever in a position of needing to learn, or of being a learner.  Not in ways like that.  It’s like he has it in his mind that he should be teaching me.  I guess what I would like from him is a relationship of equality.

I need to overcome my fear of being vulnerable with him.  I am not sure what that would take though.  God, I am lost in this.  Do you have a way for me to move in this?