A reunion

I'm still kind of reeling from yesterday...after many, many years apart, never knowing if I'd ever see her again, I was reunited with my daughter Aubrey.

I initially found her on MySpace about 4 years ago. I'd googled her name regularly for a long time after first getting a computer, but never had any success. In October, I think it was 2008, her grandmother passed away and I was able to learn her married name via the obituary. With that information I was able to quickly locate her on MySpace and sent a friend request immediately. She accepted it and we began to communicate. Actually it was very sporadic at first. Part of the reason was because MySpace, with it's narcissistic bent, was not a very good messaging medium. But like most people she and I migrated to facebook and left MySpace to rot. Which is really kind of sad now I think about it...I mean if it weren't for the service I would not have found her. I owe a debt of gratitude to Bob and the other poor suckers who made the website what it was before watching it sink in the wake of facebook.

With facebook we had a much better vehicle of communication and we used it. Limiting the conversations to facebook messages seemed like the right thing to do at first, because my plan was to take things slow. A month or so ago we began talking on the phone.

Well by now I guess I should provide some background...Her mother and I broke up when she was 6 months old. She was basically spirited away where I couldn't find her and the only chance I had to see her was when she was visiting her grandmother in town. I wasn't happy about the arrangement, as I felt like I should have been allowed to take her out sometimes. Like maybe to the cafe for a coke or somthing simple like that. But my ex-wife wouldn't hear of it. When she was 4 years old I had a conversation with her grandmother that led me to believe that I should not come around anymore. At all. My dad and his 3rd wife were allowed to take her out but I couldn't be there.

I didn't see her again until she was 12 years old. I'm sure it was my dad's wife's idea but they brought her to my house. She wasn't allowed to get out of their truck. She had to have been scared to death. Obviously they didn't call to inform me that they would be coming around with her so it was a complete surprise to me. Only made worse by the knowledge that she wasn't supposed to be there. Moreover, I was not in a "proper state of mind" to deal with the situation. I spoke with her from outside the door of the truck and she sort of cowered in the front seat, without a doubt unsure of what to say or do. I was excited to see her but it was definitely not the way I wanted it to be.

I think she was like 24 years old when I next heard from her, and that was when I saw her on MySpace. So we're talking 12 years without even knowing where the other was. I never counted that clandestine visit, so as far as I was concerned it had been 20. Twenty years. I already had a teenage son by that time.

That was an awesome time, but up on the same level was yesterday when myself and my family spent the day with her and her husband. I won't even try to describe it other than to say that on a list of the absolute greatest, most important days of my life, yesterday is way, way up there. We are both very excited about building a relationship that, even if it can never be the kind that we would have had if I'd raised her myself, will hopefully be every bit as rewarding and precious for both of us.

I learned a lot about myself yesterday, with this huge gap in my heart finally filled. I was able to stop asking myself if God actually, really answered prayer. I was convinced that it was a waste of time, I guess because my own prayers seemed to fall upon deaf ears. But yesterday was a miracle. The whole chain of events that led to it were miraculous. I don't believe in coincidence and I never have. I never will. The way this all came together could not have been by chance. It wasn't luck. It happened for a purpose, and that purpose was not necessarilly limited to a chance for us to finally get to know each other. It was a healing, pure and simple. I will never be the same, and realized this as I was sitting in the passenger seat on the way home. I remembered all the prayers and I felt like I should give thanks to God for finally answering them. So as I prayed I tried to express just how grateful I was and the more I tried the more I realized I wouldn't be able to. I could never, in a million years, thank Him enough for this. And in that gratitude I felt His presence, almost like all the happiness, joy and thankfulness needed somewhere to go, as it was endless, and He was there to take it all in, and that's when I figured out what it meant to give praise and honor to the Lord. How He is worthy of it, not because He is "selfish" or "greedy", but because He is the source of that praise and honor, it can only flow back to Him, He recieves it because it was His to begin with. That circuit of praise is FOR US.

Ah, but as so often is the case, I wasn't meaning to split off into a load of stuff about religion. Sorry, but I just couldn't help myself this time. Hopefully I made some sense. My definition of "praise" probably doesn't jibe well with what most people think it means. But that's neither here nor there. What I wanted to say here is that I'm a happy man right now. This is really a dream come true and I hope everyone who is reading this has a dream and that it will be an answered prayer as well.

My two children, together for the first time, with their old man.