Love Letter 2

Dear Daddy,

I thought today how kind it was of you to prompt my parents to have me take piano lessons. You know how much joy it brought me at the time. Even to this day I can still play many pieces upon demand if provided the music notation, and this is a joyful thing for me.

And not only the fact of my taking piano lessons, but also the teacher you inspired my parents to choose. What a tremendous blessing! The time that Mrs. Updike invested in me--no, that is too impersonal--the quality time we shared was indelible on my memory. I cried more at her funeral than at my own father's funeral. You caused me to find extra favor in her eyes, or else you enabled me to perceive her love more than the love's of other people. My lesson was the highlight of my week, and it went on for nearly a decade. Thank you.

And then when she was in a nursing home, all alone, and no longer able to speak or possibly even recognize me, you did something in my heart that I have not seen before or since: I did something out of love rather than just doing something that appeared loving but had ulterior motives. I visited her in the nursing home and spoke to her, and touched her, and sang to her, and read the Bible to her--all with no verbal feedback to know whether it made any difference to her, with no opportunity to get attention, approval, or praise from a human.

Daddy, would you do that work in my heart again? It seemed so right. Perhaps those few visits were the only "acts of righteousness" in my whole life that I have ever done in secret. But I know that You were present because I don't have conditional love to give, so the source had to have been outside of me: You were pouring it into me so that I could pour it into her.

But now everything I do is for the purpose of ingratiating myself to others. Every word and every action is merely a means to transiently acquire another's attention with the hope that transience will turn into permanence. I hate this about myself. But without the sense of Your permanent attention and approval, I am reduced to this. How do I become secure in Your attention and approval? Is this an immature expectation of intimacy with You--sensing Your presence? If so, please cause me to grow up so that I can properly apprehend the nature of the divine-human relationship.

I await Your reply.

Love,
Philip