And they said,
"Believe in the Lord Jesus,
and you will be saved,
you and your household."
Acts 16:31.
Upon leaving Veda's Christian prison worship service, I was relieved to be away from David and all his weird negative energy. Nevertheless, I thought I'd feel a sense of calm and peace departing from a church worship service, especially after being prayed over and anointed with oil. I didn't have the faintest idea how the vast implications of prayer, or the relevance of being anointed with oil, was suppose to have on any portion of my life, but I had an unrealistic expectation of receiving a sense of serenity. However, it was quite the opposite, I felt enraged with extreme irritation and an unusually high level of agitation. This undefined aggravated state translated into slamming doors, throwing things, snapping at friends, pushing people away from me, and changing my daily routine for no valid reason. I was utterly consumed with a depth of negativity I had never consciously known before. Later, after becoming a Christian, I realized my soul had become an absolute battleground of spiritual forces of which I did not have any knowledge, nor did I understand. Due to my ignorance, I didn't have a whisper of a clue that the spirit of my soul was in a battle for life or death.
I wanted to share in what my daughter had found at Bible camp. Not in being saved, not in being a Christian, but being in a genuine father/daughter relationship by sharing hopes, dreams, and a future. Maybe this God thing could be the foundation for better communication under the premise of a common subject matter. Sarcastically, this was an idyllic aspiration for a convicted multiple murderer. Regardless, there was a deep paternal soul stirring need to participate in a role, any role, in any manner of significance, in my daughter Michiko's life. A desperately failing father with a unquenchable desire to be just a minor factor, or a passing thought in the conversation, or even a small relevant fact of any insignificant degree, in her life. There was a faint niggling of emotional turmoil, buried deep in my subconsciousness, silently screaming for some expedient need to grasp at this potentially final opportunity to build a closer bond with my only child, Michiko. As a prisoner, the opportunities to effectively interact with a family member is minimal, at all times these familial interactions are only conducted during geographically inopportunistic settings and inhospitable environments, if not totally hostile. Example, birthdays, graduations, and holidays are never celebrated on the particluar day. When an impromptu celebration is patched together in a prison visitation setting, it is normally conducted under arduous and intensely scrutinized monitoring bordering on abusive.
I'm exceedingly clever, a master manipulator of negativity, a scam artist of corruption, so it would simply be a matter of picking up a book on Jesus Christ, peruse it, and discuss it intelligently with my daughter, and she would love me for it. Immediately I knew this thought process was catastrophically wrong on all levels. I'd never been a fake anything, and I wasn't going to start faking with my daughter. I've been a total failure at everything I've ever touched, including being a husband and father, but never a fake.
The unwillingness to use the ruse of a fake Christian, as a platform to increase my familiarity with Michiko, became the impetus for an acute motivational analysis to expeditiously decide whether to actually become a Christian, or not. A genuine commitment toward either direction of this necessary dualistic determination would require an authentic transparent disclosure to Michiko. Upon verbally practicing the soliloquy of the reasoned perspective I planned to deliver to my daughter of how Christianity wasn't for me, I realized my decision was based on the lackadaisical reasoning of convenience with no basis in accumulated knowledge or experience. Making a decision that I didn't believe in Christianity without ever having attempted an honest conversation with God, or without studying the subject matter, smoothly slid me into the hypocrisy category. Making a life changing decision without a true open-minded effort to understand the implications, or at the very least the acquisition of minimal information, renders the decision void based on intellectual ignorance and an invalid premise.
Hypocritically, I could acquiesce in Michiko's belief in God through the subterfuge of tacit approval and positive affirmation, while maintaining a conscientious stoic disbelief in God. I did NOT need to take an aggressive stalwart position regarding my disbelief. In the grand scheme of things my belief or disbelief in God did NOT matter to anyone, nor have any bearing on anything. However, with Michiko believing in God, while I maintained my disbelief, appeared to diametrically oppose the desired effect of an improved relationship with my daughter. It had all the signs of pushing her farther away from me, rather than bringing her closer. My mouth stumbled uncomfortably around the words while practicing to communicate the illogical miasma of poppycock I was planning to deliver to my daughter. There is nothing smooth about a father presenting a deceptive or a fake facade to his only child.
Hopefully MICHIKO FIVE will be the last page. I experienced an unusually soul wrenching time writing MICHIKO FOUR as I had to effectively reexamine and deal with matters of conflict within my spirit to competently express them.
May our Lord and Saviour bless you and yours with the ability to forgive yourself as you venture into the Throne room to claim your inheritance.
Grace, mercy and peace.
Humbly in prayer,
SCOTT.