Testimony of Healing September 20, 1993 Issue

When I was quite young my father, who suffered from alcoholism...

Patti Lecornu

When I was quite young my father, who suffered from alcoholism, left home and lost touch with the family. He returned many years later and attempted to resume his role as father; and although we had contact over the next several years, I never let myself get close to him.

Then he was diagnosed with a terminal illness and told he had only a short time to live. I felt an urgent need to love him and to establish a relationship with him in the remaining months (after all he was my father—surely I must love him!). But I didn't feel love, even though I prayed sincerely.

I had been asking God to show me qualities in my father that I could love. I also prayed to feel less burdened by the situation. One day these words came to me, as if they were spoken aloud, "I am your Father, and I have never left you. I am Love, and you have never for a moment been separated from Love." At that moment I felt a great forgiveness. The past with its bitterness began dropping away. I knew I had always been completely loved of God and that I had been mistakenly trying to love a mortal—to establish a human relationship, instead of acknowledging the omnipresence of my real Father, God.

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