I’ll share it in the open then. If you don’t mind.
A little backstory. I didn’t know who my father is until I was in my forties. The man I was told was my father, was not my father. But instead a man my mother had an affair with, the result being me. I had no idea that my grandma whom I loved wrestled often with my being born out of wedlock.
My biological father whom I never met struggled with his own being a “bastard” to where after getting my mom pregnant during his own affair while he had a wife too…he wanted nothing to do with me.
When this came out in my late forties…it wasn’t until later that I started to wrestle with the conception of my husband and my first daughter. We have been married for thirty -five years…together since being teens. There was one other guy I was with. The more convicted I became wrestling with time periods the more I wrestled with “but how?” How is it and could it even be possible that I am exactly like my mother, in the same place as her. To me this is what you mean with coming to terms that we are no better. But How when I had no idea who I was, or who my father was, thinking I had the same father as my brother and sister…how was I in the same place now questioning the conception of our first daughter. I’m being truthful that never once had I considered this a possibility as we were a family, now with grandchildren.
The more I was bothered, I knew I had to tell my husband. He knew about the one guy. But we had never fully discussed the time periods. Immediately he looked up photos of the guy and his daughter on Facebook. To see if our first child looked anything like his.
My husband told our daughter she might not be his. But after this …none of us ever talked about it again. No test to confirm it. My husband and I are not together now but living separate. Not divorced but separated. We don’t talk about it but I know it is eating away at us.
I don’t push for a test to confirm. if it ends up that our daughter was conceived by another guy. I will lose everything. And I do mean everything. Not only will I fully be able to say I am my mother. My husband and mine relationship will implode….if it hasn’t already. My husbands family who have raised her as their first grandchild will view all of what we have lived differently. I think they will view me very differently. All the memories of that first grand baby. All the reason my husband and I fought to stay married. For our family. If we take a test and it turns out that way, I will be shamed and rightfully so. It will be embarrassing.
So your post truly makes me think of faith and trust in what he says on losing everything. But then I do also think of what my fear withholds in loss. Could there be healing? Am I selfishly to save my own face, withholding others opportunities towards forgiveness. My husband had no answers. Our daughter has no answers. And I have no answers. Instead at the moment…we bury it and deny it and ignore it …but it is there beating under the surface. I know it has and will to come out eventually. I’m afraid of the loss. I’m afraid of the loss of my marriage and loss of my life before and I’m afraid to have shame and remorse? But denying has had its own cost…because even though my husband hasn’t mentioned testing. He does mention the bite of resentment in words …always present in the possibility.
Even if we don’t test, I see the denial, ignoring, and burying of it is already ruining my marriage. It is only others don’t have the full truth yet about it.
Wrestled with whether or not to share this. But this is what I wrestle with in regards to losing all things, and even your own image…that you might gain His.
Now considering it…it would be a blessing to lose my own image (fully disclosed above), and gain His.
