Reflections on Longing

As I wait for this car to be painted, I feel something unpleasant stirring inside me.  I'm trying to understand and articulate the way I feel.  I should be happy to have the car, grateful that God has blessed me... but I'm struggling with a very different kind of feeling.   It's  an old, familiar feeling, dredging up memories from my earliest childhood.  Somehow, it's mixed up with my feelings about my Dad and his terminal illness, and with grief over my Mom.

This morning, I am able to put a name to this feeling.  It is longing.

I long for the thunderbird to be painted, to have it back, to admire it, to drive it.  I long to take my Dad and my Uncle Toronado for a ride in it.  (Uncle Toronado is the WWII figher pilot that owned this car for 20 years.  I think he's 91 this year)  I long for solace, for affirmation, for peace in my soul.

My earliest memory of this longing was as a pre-schooler, waiting for weeks at a time for my Dad to come home.  Dad was a salesman for an electronics company, and had a very large territory.  He virtually lived on the road, and Mom was very lonely.  It didn't help that Grandma had recently died.  Mom relied on the neighbors a lot, and they often took care of me, but she was a young mother who obviously missed her husband!

As an adolescent, I had a crush on several different schoolgirls, none of which had any interest in me.  I was woefully inept in athletics.  Dad was still unavailable, and Mom wasn't coping very well..  The longing continued and deepened.  I longed to be wanted, to be valued.  The neglect I experienced at home made this longing deeper and more pronounced.  It became a dark knot in my soul.  The longing reached a point that I actively started looking for ways to avoid it, or to numb it.  I gradually found ways to escape, to self medicate.  But underneath the music, the drugs, and the porn, the longing was still there.

This Thunderbird played a role in that longing, too.  It was a symbol of escape, a promise of wholeness.  I longed for it to be fixed, I longed to drive it, I longed to go places in it, and for affirming comments from my friends.  For five years it was the focus of my longing, but with each failure and stolen part it gradually morphed into a symbol of my helplessness and inadequacy.  I eventually realized the vanity of this longing and became ready to let it go.  My escape from my childhood was nearly complete.  I left home and closed the door on my longing.

From then until now, I have not experienced longing to the same degree.  Sure, I longed for a productive career.   With my wife, I longed for a child... then a second child.  I longed for my Mother to get better.  I longed for my boys to have a relationship with God, and for success in school and in boy scouts.  I longed for my Mother-in-law to give her daughter her blessing before she died.  Some of those were painful longings.  But I remember worse... I remember the T-bird.  I remember how that felt.

Now, the car is back, and I still remember.  I remember the dark knot.  That memory seems to amplify my newer longings.  I long for my Dad to bless me before he dies.  I long for a deeper, more meaningful affirmation from him and from God.  I long for success and happiness for my boys.  Each new longing reflects how I have longed before, and back to my adolescent failure, pain, and grief.

Now, I must learn to wait in the middle of the longing.  I must learn to wait, and not try to escape.  I must choose to persevere, believing that something better is ahead.  I must believe the evidence of my own eyes, that I am not the man I was.  I can see that the T-bird is changing.  I can remember the engine starting, and that recent glorious trip around Grandma's driveway.  I can remember the joy of  working on the car alongside my son.

No, this longing is not the same.  This longing is finite, and healing is on the way.  That is the choice I make.  That is what I want to remember.