by Sandra Driver

The FICTION referred to in the title is the belief that we are separate from God/Love.
My spiritual journey has led me to discover that the power of love exists in all things. This appears to be the message that I am being encouraged to share at this time.

An Excerpt from "Mending the Crucifiction of My Life"

I knew that I did not have to know how to forgive. I just needed the desire to do so. God would take care of the rest.
As I grew in my spiritual awareness of the true nature of good and evil, it was inevitable that I would move into a deeper place of forgiveness, not only of my father, but of myself.

Forgiveness takes time. There are definite stages to the process. I had already moved through those early stages of anger and was anxious to move quickly into the final stages of acceptance and forgiveness. By now, I was aware that my father's uncontrolled behaviour when he had been drinking was an act of love that I had co-created to learn my life's lessons. Because I had this knowledge, I felt that I needed to deny its impact upon my life and the pain that it caused me.

I soon discovered that you cannot skip any of the steps in the forgiveness process. Before I could go further, I first had to acknowledge that the things that caused me so much pain in my childhood did matter. Their influence upon my life was great, shaping for me a world of fear, limitation, separation and suffering I would not wish on any child. It was important for me to acknowledge and feel this pain during the healing process, instead of pretending it did not exist. Only when I allowed myself to grieve, was I ready to come to a place of greater acceptance.

Why did I choose to forgive my father after all those years? Quite simply, I was finally ready to accept responsibility for my life. In the past, I had wanted to believe that my father was the one at fault for everything that went wrong. I wanted to use his behaviour to justify my anger. I wanted to make him accountable for holding me back from creating the world I truly desired for myself. But I wasn't a child anymore. My father no longer told me what to do. I, alone, held the reins of limitation that kept me imprisoned.

The choices of our lives are ours, alone, to make. I could have chosen to remain at peace amid the turmoil of my childhood. I could have chosen to see with greater compassion the way in which my father's anger was a mask for his pain. I could have chosen to pray. This would have changed the course of both our lives and the lives of those we have touched.

Forgiveness is a gift to the self, for it is actually we who are the unforgiven. We judge ourselves for the things we could have done but did not do. All those years, I felt that I was the only one who suffered. I could not see that my father's suffering was equal to my own. A heart that is closed knows no peace. If it cannot open to give, it cannot open to receive. By holding onto my need for revenge, I held onto my suffering. No amount of anger or resentment can ever change the past. That which can be changed is your perception of it. And that is what I did.

It is my belief that we choose the identity our our parents before we incarnate. This decision is made with the intent to be born into an environment that is ideal for the lessons we have chosen to learn in this particular lifetime. Our higher self agrees to each and everything that happens to us and assists in its creation. We also agree to forget these things when we arrive on this planet.

I know that my father showed great courage in coming to this planet of duality to play the role of villain in my life so I could learn my lesson of forgiveness. I shall always honour the tremendous love he showed for me by taking on such great personal pain in this lifetime so I could fulfill my life's purpose.

Mine is not a tale of woe. It is a story of resurrection, not crucifiction. Like Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz", I came to see that I had always been home. Mine was the perfect childhood. What caused me such great pain was in not recognizing this fact. I was too lost in the way I thought things should have been to bless the things that were.

As a child, I had always assumed that my father did not love me, not only because his actions seemed unloving, but also because he had never told me that he did. The truths are often the words that are left unspoken. My father did not know how to love me the way I desired. His own parents had not passed on this knowledge to him. Had he known how to do things differently, he surely would have.

My search for my father's love ended with the knowledge that he has always loved me. In the same way, even through my anger, I have always loved him. Now that the anger was unmasked, the truth could be revealed. It suddenly seemed very important that I not let my life slip away without communicating the love I held for my father. I had made the decision to never live with the regret of unspoken words when I was finally able to say to my father, "I love you."

My gift of healing and forgiveness to my father became a most precious gift to myself. As the anger melted, I finally understood. Forgiveness is merely a step along the path of awareness because we have chosen to judge another. The truth about forgiveness is that there is no need to forgive because no one has ever done anything wrong.

With love and gratitude, Sandra Diver

For Copies of Sandra's Book -Email requests to: Mending the Crucifiction of My Life

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