Missing Pieces of Me - Part 3 Trigger Warning - I really hate those words but please use wisdom reading this . Pray first , and if necessary either read with someone you trust , or do not read it . Some of this is necessarily more explicit than I wish it to be ; I have spared the reader most of what I remember . In 1964 we moved down to the California desert so my father could be near his mother ( my Nana ) . We went from riches to rags , and my father tried a few jobs while he was running from his cancer . He became a deputy sheriff , and we were fairly settled for a little while in a small town called Desert Hot Springs , California . One day I was outside , standing in the desert alone , and I remember that God spoke to me . He told me that I would have three children , and I would heal people . I didn 't know God at the time , and since my family didn 't have a religion , I didn 't know that Jesus was God 's Son , either . However , I implicitly believed that what God told me was true . These words helped to carry me through some of the darkest days of my life , and no matter where I have been , I have always kept them hidden in my heart . When I was in the second grade , we began moving around a lot . We moved all over the Mojave Desert - Palm Springs , North Palm Springs , Yucca Valley , Desert Hot Springs and other places . I do remember that we even tried Prescott , Arizona and South Pasadena , California for a brief time . I went to five different schools in the second grade . After that I have no memory for several years . It was shortly after that I was awakened one night by my father . He had been drinking , and they had been fighting ; he told me he was leaving my mother and asked me if I wanted to come with him . I wanted to desperately , but I was so afraid of my mother that I said no . It was a terrible choice , and I cried all night after he left . And though my father came home the next day , a great big crack began to form in my trust of him and what little sense of well - being I had . I had to be eleven or twelve by this time , because there were six of us kids now - Christi , Cameron , Clifton , Clayton , Carlyn , and me . The boys had one bedroom and the girls had another . My parents slept on a sofa - bed in the living room . My sister , Christi , and I shared a double bed , and my baby sister , Carlyn , slept in a playpen . One night , Christi was already sleeping , but I laid awake listening to the sounds of " Laugh - In " on the television , when suddenly at the foot of my bed Satan appeared . I knew he was bad , though I didn 't know who he was at that time . He was wearing a top hat and a tuxedo coat and tails - kind of like Fred Astaire - but he appeared in photo - negative image , and he was laughing at me . So his body was all black and his tuxedo appeared white , even though I could tell that it was the opposite . I was frozen with fear and could not move until he had had his laugh and finally left me alone . Then like a shot I was up and out of my bed , running into the living room and climbing , sobbing , into my daddy 's lap . I told him what I saw , and he didn 't believe me , but he tried to comfort me by telling me that it was just a bad dream . I don 't know where in the house my mother was at the time , but there was always this sense of her disapproval that hovered over us like a bad angel and forced us to separate before we could incur her wrath . I stayed up for a few minutes , sitting on Daddy 's lap with my arms around his neck , watching Goldie Hawn 's foolishness on the television screen , and then Daddy sent me back to bed . When my mother punished me , there was anger , rage , disgust , inconvenience , resentment and even hatred but never , ever love . But I can 't remember my father ever hitting me . When my father disciplined me , there was love in it . Even if I was punished for something dangerous or irresponsible , it seemed clear that he had fear of harm being done to me , or other genuine concern mixed with love . But he did some things that didn 't make sense , especially as I look back on them . I had a horror of spiders , and a fact of living in the desert : there are spiders everywhere . Each morning after we got up and had breakfast , if it wasn 't a school day we all went out to play except the littlest sister . One time Daddy was already outside sitting in a chair and he called me over to him to come give him a kiss . I happily went to say good morning and he brought out a mason jar with a live tarantula inside . I screamed , and he made me come near to see it . I don 't know what he was thinking , but it certainly solidified my terror of spiders and robbed me of sleep for many nights afterward . We had a goat pen down below our house , and Daddy also had a cage with homing pigeons and a kinkajou he had bartered with the landlord to get ( the pic at the top of this page is a kinkajou ) . The kinkajou was nocturnal , and I thought it was beautiful , but I was afraid of it . Daddy called me into the cage to sit with him while he held it . He wanted me to touch it and hold it , but I was afraid . I asked him if it could bite me , and he said yes . I asked if it would hurt , and he said yes , but not very much and that after it had bit me once I would be satisfied and understand not to be afraid . I just couldn 't do it . Not long after , the kinkajou escaped into the desert and we never found it . There was one day I came home from school in the fourth grade and handed my dad a note . It was permission to attend a class telling about human reproduction . He called it " sex education " and I nearly fell through the floor . I never said that word , and couldn 't believe Daddy said it to me . I was so embarrassed , and my mother called me a prude back then . It was a different time in our country , when the Miss America and all lesser pageants were promoting the sex goddesses but everyone else was supposed to be normal and modest . Of course , teenagers in high school were given a certain amount of latitude and the beach party movies were forbidden to me . One day we were locked out of the house - all six of us kids . My brother Cameron was very rebellious and he found a way to break into the house . After that , my dad called us all into the house and had a talk with us . Apparently my brother had found my parents having sex . Daddy said , " Your mother and I were doing what 's called ' fucking ' . " He must have thought my brother would come out with some story to tell that would have been frightening or confusing , so he decided to clear it up for us . Looking back I realized that there were many other euphemisms or descriptions he could have used , but given the state of their relationship , that is the one that most closely fit his feelings for our mother . We had to move from that house and I guess we sold the goats and gave the homing pigeons back to the landlord . We moved to a dilapidated place called Morris Ranch in Morongo Valley . Apparently this was the site of a feud at one time , and in the barn Daddy discovered a hidden cache of guns and ammo . He was worried about booby traps and animal traps on the property possibly hurting one of us kids , so he carefully went over the areas that we were allowed to play in , and he forbade us to go anywhere else . That was the house where little Clifton pulled the boiling hot coffee percolator off the counter and had to be rushed to the hospital miles away . He came home bandaged from head to his waist and some on his legs . It was just awful . Our mother picked up a couple of hippies and invited them to stay with us at that house . I don 't know where she met them , but they seemed to be involved in the same metaphysical stuff she was into . Daddy privately told me they were worthless bums just sponging off of us , and he didn 't want them staying there . I don 't remember leaving Morris Ranch , and I don 't know where we lived in between , but eventually we moved to Pine Cove , California , where Nana and Don ( my step - grandpa ) had bought a duplex ( upper and lower units ) . We moved in , with Nana and Don living upstairs and us downstairs . It was a two bedroom house , so Daddy set up three sets of double bunk beds in one room for us kids , and he and our mother had the other room . It was tight . My dad had a pet rat named Buffy , and she was really cute . She was pretty young , but she was very friendly and we loved her . I remember at the end of a school year my science teacher asked if someone would take home the class pet rat , and I volunteered . My mother was mad at me for bringing him home , but I was allowed to keep him there for a while . One day I wanted to let Buffy play with him , and so I let them into the same cage . My mother came out and slapped my face and called me a slut , and it was only later that I found out that she thought I meant for them to mate . How that would have made me a slut ( I didn 't yet know the meaning of the word ) , I have no idea . The visiting rat was removed from our home , and I assume he was returned to the teacher . I remember going to the store for my dad once . He had given me a $ 20 bill and a note to buy cigarettes for him , and I had to get milk and something else . The people who owned the store also ran it . Mr . K rang me up and it wasn 't until I got home that I found out that he short - changed me $ 10 . Daddy asked me what happened , and so I went back and told Mr . K that he didn 't give me my ten dollars . He denied it and treated me like a stupid little child . I had to go home and tell Daddy that he wouldn 't give me back the money . I guess this was supposed to be a lesson in responsibility . But to my mind , it was unjust , and this was one situation where I decided I would take exactly ten dollars ' worth of merchandise from that store if they wouldn 't give me the money back . So I did . I never got caught . My conscience bothered me a little bit because I didn 't steal stuff for the family , knowing I would get in big trouble . I took cookies and candy and stuff like that , and stashed it where nobody could find me eating it . I was always hungry , and my conscience didn 't hurt me all that much . We eventually found a bigger house several miles away in Idyllwild and moved . Then the boys had their own bedroom and so did us girls , and we shared a wall with our parents , whose bedroom was on the other side . There was a big living room and dining area and a small galley kitchen . There was a shop / garage area and soon after , another goat pen . This house was down on Tollgate Road , and we lived there through my eighth grade . One day I got kicked between the legs at school . There was blood . My mother took me to a doctor and I didn 't know why . He wasn 't our family doctor , and I had never met him before . I had to be forced onto that exam table in front of him , and had to " ride the stirrups " as my mother crudely put it ; I think that was the first time I truly felt like I wanted to die . Nothing prepared me for what he was going to do to me , and my mother was grim and unhelpful . All I could understand from her talk was that the girl who kicked me might get sued for ruining something inside of me - much later I learned that it was my hymen - and apparently the doctor confirmed that the blood came from surface lacerations . On that day I had an odd mixture of feelings . Aside from wanting to die , my mother had taken interest in me and hadn 't made me go back to school . It was the closest thing to positive attention I had received from her in a long time . But I didn 't know her personal , selfish reasons for that whole thing . For her pride was everything . Appearances were everything . It didn 't matter what went on privately as long as it wasn 't made public knowledge . How anyone would have known if I was still a virgin was not the important thing , and it was entirely possible that I had already had reconstructive surgery to restore virginity that had been taken from me by then , and she was checking on her investment , or making sure her slave was still intact . It certainly wasn 't because she cared about me or did the things that normal mothers did for and with their daughters . Daddy took me to buy my first brassiere - my mother was far too jealous of me to do that . I remember pulling up to the store in a strip mall that my Nana recommended , and Daddy was singing a little song : " zeer , zeer , zeer we 're going to buy Cate a brassiere " . I saw a boy from school in the parking lot ; I was mortified so I begged Daddy not to sing that song . He stopped singing the words , but kept humming the little tune as we walked into the store . It was a store that only sold women 's foundation items . A lady helped me find the proper bra and a girdle , since that was my Nana 's recommendation . I was somewhere around 12 years old , and I have no idea why I needed a girdle . I was a beanpole , tall and lanky and I guess it was just what someone from my Nana 's generation would do so she thought it was appropriate . Anyway , I got a bra and girdle that fit and Daddy bought it for me . We went to Nana 's house , and I was made to model it in front of Daddy and Nana . I was mortified . But my relief over not having to go with my mother outweighed my embarrassment , so I counted myself lucky . I didn 't get another bra until a year or so later when a box of clothes came to us . They were hand - me - downs from a family we were friends with . They had a teenage daughter who was older than I . I found two lovely flower - patterned bras that I just fell in love with - one turquoise and one pink . I sneaked them out of the box , and ran to try them on in the bathroom . They were 32B and they fit me perfectly . I had quit wearing my other bra because it was too small and tight on me ; I was happy because now I could go to school without embarrassment over what showed through my shirt . Then to my horror my mother asked me what happened to the bras : I didn 't know she knew about them . I swallowed hard and told her I took them . She said ; " Did they fit ? " I said yes . She just said " Oh " and walked away . Inside I was doing a happy dance because she didn 't beat me or slap me and she let me keep them ! ! I think it was a natural reaction for me to shut my mind to all things sexual about my mother , because she made me feel so humiliated . Her attitudes toward me being a prude and a puritan , alternating with calling me a slut and a vixen , and anything else insulting she could say to me or about me to strangers , told me that sex was something I didn 't want any part of and I was mortified to even discuss it . Somehow I had developed modesty , and I considered sex and sexuality to be a very private matter - one I didn 't suppose I really would want to experience , except perhaps with Bobby Sherman or Davey Jones from the Monkees , and that was only in my fantasies that we would kiss and hug . I had no erotic ideas , I simply wanted love . When I was 12 years old or maybe 13 , I was allowed to go sing in the choir at the local Community Presbyterian Church . Nana was the church organist and she also ran the choir . One day after coming out of church after choir rehearsal , a man approached me and said I was quite the lovely young lady , and he noticed my chest and asked me if that was all me . I was shocked . I must have nodded my head and then he said well why don 't we go behind the church and you can prove it to me . I felt like a target , and by the grace of God I was able to get away from him . I was mortified by this incident and when I got home I told my mother about it . She said whatever you do don 't tell your father because he would go and kill the man . She did not try to comfort me or reassure me in any way , but instead gave me the impression that it would be a punishable offense if I disobeyed her . But the problem ate away at me until finally one day I decided to tell Daddy about it . He told me that my mother had already told him about it . He was sick in bed that day and he did not have much in the way of reassurance for me , but I did not hold it against him . However , I felt betrayed by her . It was just another way for her to maintain control of the narrative . She thrived on controlling information ; information was power . The one time my mother seemed to take an interest in me was for my 14th birthday . But the way she did it was so sadistic that it scarred me . She conspired with my last period teacher to keep me after school for detention , and I was told my mother would be coming in . I was made to wait out in the hallway , and when my mother showed up she had a big paper bag in her hands and she told me to stay in the hallway and went into the class . I nearly vomited from fear . After about 30 minutes I was told to come inside . It was a surprise party and there were about half a dozen girls there - most of whom couldn 't stand me because I was so " weird " . I received my first pair of panty hose , in public , and the whole thing was the worst humiliation I could remember having received from her up to that point . I had just come back from a summer retreat - conservation camp in Idyllwild , a week hiking and camping with a bunch of other girls , compliments of an anonymous donor . It was summer , and school was going to start shortly . I had a wonderful time learning how to short - sheet beds , telling ghost stories , cooking , and gaining some insight from kind and friendly adults who were not busy dying , or finding ways to punish me . Of course , the fun I had was so all - consuming , and the week blew by before I knew it . I even developed a relationship with a " boyfriend " - forever in my memory he is GI Joe - he taught me how to play Cribbage . One night shortly after my return , I heard a commotion in my daddy 's room , and since it wasn 't yet bedtime , I came out of my bedroom ( shared with two sisters ) and my mother told me that she had just beaten Daddy up in bed . I was horrified , but she had a wild look in her eyes , as she huffed and puffed , and was clearly proud of what she had done . I was mortified . I couldn 't understand it . Why beat up Daddy ? He was already so sick he couldn 't eat , and what little he tried to drink always came back up . I was ashamed and afraid , and I went to my room and got in bed and covered my head so nobody would see me cry . Daddy started telling my mother he had a lot of pain in his guts , and she told him it was all psychosomatic - a word she had learned and felt she was qualified to dispense . Of course , I boiled the syringes and needles that he needed for daily injections of Demerol for pain , so I knew that at least one doctor thought my daddy 's pain was real . A few more days and Daddy said he suddenly felt something burst and the pain wasn 't nearly as bad . He went to the hospital but they couldn 't figure it out , so they sent him home . While he was gone I went to his bedroom to get something and stumbled upon an envelope with a list scrawled on it . It looked like a will - parting out his possessions to the six of us kids . I asked him about it and that was the first time I realized he was really going to die . I had no place to put this information , nothing in me could accept it . I simply watched and worried . He dropped so much weight he looked like a frame with little flesh on , and he was getting sicker and sicker . The last time I laid eyes on him , he was gaunt and almost as grey as stone , wearing his maroon bathrobe and some old slippers , climbing into the back seat of his mom 's maroon Cadillac so he could lie down . Nana was taking him to Loma Linda University Hospital near San Bernardino . It was going to take more than an hour to get there . Days passed and I asked if I could see Daddy . Mother said no , that children weren 't allowed . Then one day my Uncle Rob ( Nana 's brother ) came to pick me up and take me to San Berdoo to stay with him and Aunt Doris for a few days . I had no idea what was going on , but I knew it couldn 't be good . Everything seemed so far away , and I felt like I was sleepwalking . I often went for walks by myself in the neighborhood . One day I came back to find my mother waiting for me . She took me to the room I was using , and sat me down to tell me a story . It was a convoluted fairy tale about reincarnation and Descended Bastards , and as she waxed eloquent with a gleam in her eye , I cut her short , bluntly asking if she was trying to tell me that my Daddy was dead . She was displeased but chose not to slap me this time . She said yes , he was dead . Then she said that Daddy saw Jesus and ( her ascended ) Master before he died . I didn 't even know what to do . Everything began to recede from my view , and I caught myself before I fainted . I said not one word to her as I left her sitting on my bed . Uncle Rob and Aunt Doris were sitting in the living room with stunned worry marking their faces . I said , " Did you think I was going to scream and throw a fit ? " And I walked out the door . I didn 't know God yet . After years of my mother forcing all of us to be vegetarians while she pursued her " Descended Bastards " , I still knew nothing of God . Metaphysical and dark spiritual teaching clouded my mind , and as I walked and cried out to the sky , I found that I had no hope left . Back home , it was forbidden for us kids to cry . We were not to show our grief because our mother didn 't want the pity of strangers . Nana came to visit us when she could , though our mother didn 't like her , and now had the power to keep her away . On one of her rare visits , I learned that Daddy had asked for me to come and visit in the hospital . It wasn 't against the rules after all , but my mother had the power to prevent me , and so she did . That afternoon my sister Christi , my brother Cameron and I went out to the garage and stood in a sort of circle and just wailed our pain . There were no words that could express our devastation . We weren 't safe even out there . Our mother opened the door and savagely ordered us to stop crying and get to the house . Our neighbor , Mrs . Reppe , cooked up a giant pan of stuffed cabbage and sent it over for us to eat . Our mother wasn 't at home , so we went ahead and started eating . There was meat in it , and we knew we 'd get in trouble for it , but we were so hungry we ate it anyway . When she returned , she was really angry , and told me to take the pot of food back to our neighbor . I don 't know what she thought when she found that we had eaten part of it . I only know that we got away with eating it , even though there was meat in it , and we truly wished we could have eaten the rest of it . I realized early on that Barbara ( mother ) could order us not to grieve because she had no grief herself ! I knew about her affairs , and she had already had a man into our home , into my father 's bed , and later she came up with some insane story that she was pregnant and that it was Daddy 's baby , and that this child would be the reincarnation of my father . She must not have known that Nana had told me Daddy had a vasectomy some time back because he was afraid he would pass down his sickness to a baby , and was already worried about my littlest sister and brother . Because of what Nana told me , I knew that the child could not be Daddy 's , and I didn 't believe for one moment my mother 's stupid story about reincarnation . But if she was being nice for the moment , I figured I didn 't want to press my luck , so I stayed quiet about it and decided to wait and see what happened . At school I had heard rumors about the man who came to see my mother and sleep with her ; he was married . I knew his kids . In fact there were rumors that his two youngest were caught simulating sex with each other because he had sex with his wife in front of his kids ; at least that was the story . I was mystified by all of this , and very worried . It was very awkward for me on the night all six of us kids and our mother went to spend the night at his house with his family . I kept feeling guilty , like we shouldn 't be there , because I knew my mother was sleeping with the husband and father of this family . She didn 't have the good sense to be ashamed , but I was embarrassed for all of us . A few weeks later I asked her about the baby . She said oh it was a false alarm , and there was no baby . I couldn 't believe how blithely she said it , as if she had just reported the weather forecast . The teeny tiny hope I had that a baby would make life better got dashed to the ground , along with the rest of my trust . That day the newly formed icicles in my heart grew to stalactite proportions , and I think that was the first time I wished my mother had died in place of my daddy . After Daddy died , I constantly dreamed that he was really still alive and that this was just a conspiracy to get him away from my mother . In my dreams he was sick and I was going to find him and heal him ; this went on for 17 or 18 years , and it was a form of torture . Every time I would dream about him , I would wake up crying . I cried out that I couldn 't take it anymore . School started and I was grieving terribly . I had to keep it inside , and it made it hard for me to keep up my grades . One day my music teacher asked to speak to me as I was on my way to lunch . He said he was worried , he could see I wasn 't doing well . I panicked and told him everything was fine , just fine ! I begged him not to say anything to anyone else about it because I didn 't want to get in trouble with my mom . I was sweating it all night , and the next morning I came to school dressed in the most ridiculous costume , almost like a clown , and as I entered his classroom , I walked up to his desk and told him I was fine - just fine . He told me I didn 't have to pretend , and he commented on my silly clothes . Once more I insisted that I was fine , and there was no need to speak to my mother . My terror of her was so complete , I was sure that if he asked to speak to her , that she might beat me or do something worse . As far as I know , he let it rest . For me , the " truth " I desperately clung to was that Daddy would never have allowed me to marry that guy that was seven years older than me when I was 17 ( more on that later ) . He would never have allowed my mother to do the things she did . Since it wasn 't his fault that he was sick and dying for seven years , then it meant that if he was healthy he would not have allowed me to continue to be used as a slave by my mother , and he would have allowed me to have friends . He would have encouraged me when I got straight " A " grades in school instead of allowing my mother to threaten me and telling me that my accomplishments didn 't mean as much because it was easy for me . He wouldn 't have allowed her to compare me unfavorably to my sister who got C and D grades . He would have somehow made my mother be a real mother . He would not have found it necessary to take me into his room and pretend to beat the bed instead of me to pacify her , and he wouldn 't have to tell me to cry out so the lie wouldn 't be discovered . He would have been allowed to spend as much time with me as he wished without apology , and somehow she wouldn 't be allowed to degrade and humiliate me , call me ugly , tell me I was an accident , and do all the sneaky , mean things she did to me on a regular basis . I had no privacy where my mother was concerned . When I started my period she went behind me and checked to see if there was really menstrual blood on my sanitary napkin after I had already disposed of it . I was humiliated . It seemed like I was denied the dignity of every feminine rite of passage . I compared my plight to that of my sister , who had supposedly started her period before me . My mother made such a big deal out of her , and said she was becoming a woman . I think it was her way of covering her eyes to the rape that her boyfriend had perpetrated on my sister . Barbara was good at lying , even to herself , and believing those lies as a way of self - preservation . She suffered from delusions of grandeur . She sincerely felt my dad held her down after we moved to California - that he had gotten in her way of succeeding as , having the nerve to be dying and requiring assistance that she was entirely unwilling to provide . She hated him even more after he was dead and spoke bitterly to us about him , trying to poison his memory for us . She fancied herself a teacher , and her students were men . She had some nasty books that illustrated sexual positions that had something to do with chakras , and after Daddy died , her boyfriend ( the married man with several kids ) would come over and they would do embarrassing yoga positions in the living room . I suppose that was their foreplay because us kids were sent to bed , and they ended up thrashing around on my father 's bed - on the other side of the wall I shared with them in my bedroom . Sometimes I wish I had my Nana here to answer my hard questions . I would have a lot to say , too . I know we were descendants of the House of Hohenzollern , of the Kaiser Wilhelm , and also of Swedish nobility . I would ask her to tell me much more about our ( now obvious Illuminati ) bloodlines . I would ask her to tell me about Daddy 's time in parochial school , and why he even attended when neither of them was Catholic . I 'd ask about her genealogy and I 'd have a lot to ask her about her father and her mother . I 'd ask her how my dad met my mother , and what exactly were the facts about my birth ? What were the events leading up to my abuse ? To the deaths of my brothers and the disappearance of my sister . If my Dad were here , I would have many questions for him as well . He whom I have always seen as my protector and champion , yet I cannot see many instances when he successfully saved me from my mother 's abuse . And he did put me in the closet on more than occasion . And what about her British / English bloodlines and the crazy stuff in her family ? ? Shock treatments for Grandpa Jimmy ? His early death ? And why were we in the closet anyway - on multiple occasions ? I recall being there by myself . I also recall being there with my sister , Christi , and then I remember being there with Christi and Cameron and Clifton , all four of us , with Clifton on the floor crawling around in his nightgown at our feet , and the three of us standing there . We were hungry so we started eating dog food out of the 50 pound bag that sat next to the water heater . What was going on ? Why weren 't we allowed to be in our bedrooms ? It makes no sense . During my lifetime as these things would occasionally come to my mind , I would try to make up fantasies to explain it in such a way that it would make my dad innocent of any wrongdoing . My mom was a raging psychopath who controlled everything . My dad was clearly afraid of her , and it was her fault we moved so many times it was impossible to remember all the cities , so I had to resort to remembering what states we lived in . He couldn 't control her and he tried to run interference only if it wouldn 't incur her wrath . He was sickly and weak and she would have hurt him . He tried to keep her busy so she didn 't have time to think of hurting me . He was keeping us in the closet for our own good . He was using the lesson of the oranges to toughen me up , to learn to trust him . Just a daughter of my Abba , hoping to introduce Him around . View all posts by Pastora Covert Posted on January 9 , 2017January 10 , 2017Author Pastora CovertCategories My StoryTags devil , fear , hate , Love , memories , spiritual , Trauma 3 thoughts on " Missing Pieces of Me - Part 3 " David Murry says : January 12 , 2017 at 1 : 21 pm This seems entirely and inherently wrong to " like " a piece such as this . Too deep , too raw and too painful to be given a star . Oh , Sister … thank you for sharing all of this . I am seeing more , learning more and growing in His heart as I am taken on these journeys . How can one , who is the reader , say it is too difficult to bear in light of the one who actually lived it ? ? I know exactly what you mean about the star thing . I 've left similar comments myself . Thank you for being sensitive the way you are . You don 't realize what a wonderful role model you are for your own children . In hindsight , how I wish I had that complete package in a father - but it wasn 't all bad , and he remains ( so far ) my tarnished knight in rusty armor because at least I knew he loved me . Abba bless you and your precious wife and children to always be and remain abiding in the True Vine . You have all become precious to me . Love ( because I CAN love , thanks to Yeshua ! ) ,