I will be honest in saying that I’ve always felt a bit sad and jealous growing up surveying the families around me.
There always seemed to be friends at school who still had two parents raising them, siblings they got along with, a 4X4, a nice house and a dog. The perfect idea of an Australian family. A completely different picture from the family I came from.
I had a depressed single Mum, a younger sister who preferred not to socialise with me, and an emotionally absent father who spent more money buying himself motorbikes than paying our education.
Was I angry? Yes. Did I feel alone? Yes. Did I let that dictate who I was? You betcha.
While I didn’t let it change my character. I was still a somewhat happy, functioning child up to my adolescence who was compassionate, sensitive, and quiet, but I always felt deep down, heart-broken, and abandoned. I told myself my parents didn’t love me, my sister always got the better deal in life, and I became bitter towards others and the world.
My Mum, traumatised by her divorce, was bitter too, and she passed along her disappointments in men to me. Instead of believing that great guys existed anymore I watched her go from one broken relationship to the next. Years upon years of her heartache taught me not to trust men, and to give up hope in a happy marriage. Then she struggled with alcohol and medication abuse. A journey that she is still battling.
Mother’s Day was recently, and I enjoyed showering her in gifts and praising her for raising us, but deep down I have realised I still hold onto un-forgiveness. I have blamed her for every time I had to be the adult in a situation, or look after my sister when she was out drinking. I blamed her for not finding a proper man to marry after Dad. I realised I had so much in my heart I hadn’t dealt with properly yet. Events that were in the past, but still had a strong hold on my present keeping me from living a better life.
Then there was Dad, I have always had an off and on again relationship with him. Growing up feeling criticised and insulted, my self-esteem was shattered every time I visited my Dad on his weekends with us. He had always had more money than us, and he he had a problem with being generous. When I turned 18 I didn’t speak to my Dad for an entire year. I was very angry and hurt. I didn’t know what a healthy father- daughter relationship looked like, because back then Dad had just become a stranger to me.
My sister, little miss popular, always getting away with things I was never able to. She was always ahead of me somehow in everything. Always getting invitations to parties, getting favoured by Mum, getting better grades, and having a strong sense of self- belief I never had. She was a go-getter, pushed through any obstacle, and stubbornly independent. I wanted to be loved and looked up to, as her big sister, but I was dealing with my own inner demons. I was so focused on myself, I never realised she had some of her own too. Stressed in her final year of high school, she developed an eating disorder I was unaware of. I should have seen the signs I tell myself to this day, that time she watched her weight, and only nibbled at vegetables, or when she praised herself for having a skeletal collarbone that jutted out like the models in Paris. But she wasnt crying out for help, she was keeping her distance from us, like she always did.
In life, things changed, people changed, but one thing always stayed the same throughout life, I always clung to God. While I struggled with the concept of seeing God as my Father, I saw Him as a close friend. My faith was the thing that got me through and still does. It can be the hardest thing in the world to accept that your family isn’t perfect, and your loved ones have faults, but God was always there to comfort me, and restore and redirect my identity in Him. I spent a lot of my younger years putting my identity in my flawed family, when I should have been putting it in my heavenly one instead. That’s not to say I don’t love my family, imperfections and all. But I should have turned to God instead.
I kept looking at my situation feeling hopeless, filled with despair and self-loathing. Feeling anger that life wasn’t perfect, and that I wasn’t born into the ‘perfect’ family where everything seemed to be rosey. I labelled myself an ‘outkast’, a ‘misfit’, a ‘loner’, ‘unpopular’, ‘the least favourite daughter’. But I remember a time very distinctly after church my friend gave me a book with verses on how much God loved me, and called me a ‘princess’, ‘wanted’, ‘loved’, ‘valued’, ‘daughter of God’. It restored my spirit and suddenly everything else fell away. It was just God, the creator of the universe, who called me His.
Families aren’t perfect. People are flawed, broken, and needing God. Please don’t let those negative names you call yourself sink into your heart. God loves you and He can heal you. Give yourself permission to call God your Father, and allow Him to work in your life. Put aside that negative identity you have been hiding behind and step out to be who you were called to be!
the anomaly daughter 