18/30 Things: Forgivness

{To know what I'm talking about, and to see previous 30 Things posts, start here}

18.  What has been the most difficult thing you have had to forgive?


Wow.  Yes.  I've put this one off.  It's a hard one for me.  A daily thing.  But here I go.  I'll just jump into it.  The most difficult thing for me to forgive is my dad and all he's done.. or hasn't done. 

It's been 8 years since I've talked to him.  Since then he's disowned both my sisters and me.  But I don't want to go into all the details.  There's just too much.  So very much.  
But the basics.  The basics are that my dad left my mom and us girls when I was just 6.  He never really made the time for us.  He was in the military while we were very young but that's no excuse.  We only ever heard from him once every other month while his parents heard from him every week.  He was suppose to have us every other holiday and a month out of the summer but we only saw him for a week out of the summer.  

There's just so much that I can't.  What I've mentioned was only the beginning.  There's so much more but it's just too hard, too much to put on paper.  Plus it's so personal.  Not that I don't mind talking about it, but I only talk about the pieces that come up in conversation that are relavent to the topic.  Or parts that I discuss with my mom.  
But I do want to say that my mom, my mom is great.  She's always taught us to love him and forgive him.  I think that's why we held on for so long.  Kept trying and having to move past the hurts that kept coming.  I think without her we be so much more bitter, resentful, hardened.  A part of me still is, but so much less than it could be.  
Every day, I choose to forgive.  I have to.  If I didn't it would eat me alive.  Consume me.  Every day I'm thankful that my two beautiful girls know their daddy, that he's here, that he loves and dotes on them.  Every day I thank my God that he has brought us through in love even though there's pain, instead of residing in anger and hate.
It's still hard.  I still miss what I've never known.  I'm still sad that he missed out on me, that I missed out on a having a daddy.
But God is good.  Because where I am weak, He is strong.  And I'm thankful for that.

2 Corinthians 12:9 
But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. "Therefore i will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.