A Father's Thoughts On Failure

Sitting at the Pet Scan

Remember all those hopes and dreams you had for your child or the thought that you would take a thousand bullets for her or the lethality you felt for anyone or thing that would hurt or scare her?  Remember all those thoughts that every cell of her was sacred and anything that would hurt one was sacrilege?  There comes a time when all of that is for naught.  You just sit in a clean, pretty waiting room in utter failure as all these things swirl around your child.  “Mary Carbonell” you hear and you reach out to hold her hand and pray and she stands to go, turns and looks back and in tears quietly says, “Pray for me.”  Utter failure is not something a father handles well.  Not utter failure in the sense that you didn’t try or that you tried and failed.  Utter failure in the sense that there is nothing in you that can do anything to what is in her.  It is one of the surest signs that God exists because only He could set out balm in front of you and say, “I can handle this too!”  He knows what it means to sit and watch helplessly and silently as they have their way with His Child.  Utter failure in that you have nothing, you can shake your fist at the heavens and curse a blue streak across the sky and still be left with silent nothing.  It’s those times when you try to turn your head every which way to find that one place where you can cry in private.  Only God, ONLY GOD, can be for her everything that you would if you could and you are left with ONLY GOD.  I wouldn’t wish this on anyone but if it happened He would be the only One to leave them with, ONLY GOD.