Excerpts “You should’ve seen the look on his face, my father’s, on the day I first began addressing him as a man. It was January first of 1996, New Year’s Day, what would’ve been my parents’ forty-first wedding anniversary if Mother had lived to see it. I was thirty-two years old at the time, suffering after a week-long emotional meltdown triggered by a few well-placed questions on Christmas Day of the preceding week. I struggled without sleep for seven days, was physically and emotionally spent, and was fearfully beginning to bare my soul in the presence of my father. It was a moment in a day that I shall never forget as the doorbell rang inside my condominium, allowing my father’s entry into my home. At my request, he drove the thirty-plus miles to meet with me. He came alone, without my stepmother, having no true knowledge of what he was about to encounter during his visit with me. Asking my father’s audience was an unusual request for me to have made. It was equally rare to have a visit from him. We were truly polite and cordial bloodlines with no apparent relationship of significance or meaning, other than what God had given us in title as father and son. My father had never seen me like this before: broken, weak, and full of emotion. I was only beginning to understand him and to see through him, closely watching his actions and reactions while addressing him verbally. As I began scratching through the effervescent surfaces of our relationship, he maintained his normal expression, that blank and emotionless stare, the poker face of neutrality and disassociation. He showed no emotion. Still, he looked frightened, sheepish, and bashful, lost in his inability and fear. Obviously, he wasn’t prepared for this. Nor was he ready to delve beneath the surface of his own life, to see and understand the price I paid as a result of his actions and behavior. He wouldn’t allow himself to acknowledge the pain I knew or anything I said. And therefore he couldn’t feel responsible for any of it.” ~~~ “Now I had a Christmas Dinner to negotiate. I had to put on my happy face, smile, and pretend everything was just fine. I had to spend an entire afternoon with people I wouldn’t see for another year, give repeat answers to both last year’s and next year’s question, and wonder why I felt so alone and empty after I left.” ~~~ “I knew the things I said sounded terrible. So, why did I say them? And did I actually believe them? But I must have believed what I said, or I would not have said what I did. Still, where was all of this coming from? What caused me to feel as I did?” ~~~ “In the admission of it all, my world was instantly rocketed into the unknown. My life was shot off the platform of security I once believed as truth, and everything fell into question. Of the past, everything made sense. Of the past, nothing made sense. My life was so screwed up, but I never knew. The past was my guide, my reference, everything I could possibly understand and know. I had to get beyond it, the past, to see or know anything different or besides.” ~~~ “I could finally see it: the rivalry existing in the presence of my own father. I could finally understand it: the emotional needs my father possessed that were charged at my expense. I knew the spiritual void in my father’s life: the ever-present gap and missing flow of downward blessing. And, added to that was my mother’s early death, a mixed blessing, showing me painful truths about my father’s life. Mother’s death had nothing to do with my pain and suffering or the loss of everything valued in my life. Mother was a beautiful person, as beautiful in death as in life; this was a circumstance made ugly by my father’s painful avoidance, remaining unresolved for sixteen very long years of my life. Death was simply the catalyst of awareness to losses of life and to greater problems I would come to know, losses I experienced at the hands of the living, not in those who died.” ~~~ “In that one week, I saw and relived every relational dynamic of my father’s life, knowing how that affected and impacted my life. I was freed of my spiritual bondage; the generational chain of spiritual transfer was broken; the sins of a father were cleansed and washed away; and the preset molds, patters, and blueprints of my father’s life were gone and dissolved from my life, vanishing before my very eyes. I became a free and dignified man, apart from my father, given a clean slate upon which I could begin scripting a life that was truly my own. And as time would progress, I would begin understanding my mother’s love and wisdom, her desires and goals of shaping me into a man of great character, a man who would grow to know the true meaning of love, honor, dignity, and respect.” <<< >>>

Excerpts

“You should’ve seen the look on his face, my father’s, on the day I first began addressing him as a man. It was January first of 1996, New Year’s Day, what would’ve been my parents’ forty-first wedding anniversary if Mother had lived to see it. I was thirty-two years old at the time, suffering after a week-long emotional meltdown triggered by a few well-placed questions on Christmas Day of the preceding week. I struggled without sleep for seven days, was physically and emotionally spent, and was fearfully beginning to bare my soul in the presence of my father.

It was a moment in a day that I shall never forget as the doorbell rang inside my condominium, allowing my father’s entry into my home. At my request, he drove the thirty-plus miles to meet with me. He came alone, without my stepmother, having no true knowledge of what he was about to encounter during his visit with me. Asking my father’s audience was an unusual request for me to have made. It was equally rare to have a visit from him. We were truly polite and cordial bloodlines with no apparent relationship of significance or meaning, other than what God had given us in title as father and son.

My father had never seen me like this before: broken, weak, and full of emotion. I was only beginning to understand him and to see through him, closely watching his actions and reactions while addressing him verbally. As I began scratching through the effervescent surfaces of our relationship, he maintained his normal expression, that blank and emotionless stare, the poker face of neutrality and disassociation. He showed no emotion. Still, he looked frightened, sheepish, and bashful, lost in his inability and fear. Obviously, he wasn’t prepared for this. Nor was he ready to delve beneath the surface of his own life, to see and understand the price I paid as a result of his actions and behavior. He wouldn’t allow himself to acknowledge the pain I knew or anything I said. And therefore he couldn’t feel responsible for any of it.”

~~~

“Now I had a Christmas Dinner to negotiate. I had to put on my happy face, smile, and pretend everything was just fine. I had to spend an entire afternoon with people I wouldn’t see for another year, give repeat answers to both last year’s and next year’s question, and wonder why I felt so alone and empty after I left.”

~~~

“I knew the things I said sounded terrible. So, why did I say them? And did I actually believe them? But I must have believed what I said, or I would not have said what I did. Still, where was all of this coming from? What caused me to feel as I did?”

~~~

“In the admission of it all, my world was instantly rocketed into the unknown. My life was shot off the platform of security I once believed as truth, and everything fell into question. Of the past, everything made sense. Of the past, nothing made sense. My life was so screwed up, but I never knew. The past was my guide, my reference, everything I could possibly understand and know. I had to get beyond it, the past, to see or know anything different or besides.”

~~~

“I could finally see it: the rivalry existing in the presence of my own father. I could finally understand it: the emotional needs my father possessed that were charged at my expense. I knew the spiritual void in my father’s life: the ever-present gap and missing flow of downward blessing. And, added to that was my mother’s early death, a mixed blessing, showing me painful truths about my father’s life. Mother’s death had nothing to do with my pain and suffering or the loss of everything valued in my life. Mother was a beautiful person, as beautiful in death as in life; this was a circumstance made ugly by my father’s painful avoidance, remaining unresolved for sixteen very long years of my life. Death was simply the catalyst of awareness to losses of life and to greater problems I would come to know, losses I experienced at the hands of the living, not in those who died.”

~~~

“In that one week, I saw and relived every relational dynamic of my father’s life, knowing how that affected and impacted my life. I was freed of my spiritual bondage; the generational chain of spiritual transfer was broken; the sins of a father were cleansed and washed away; and the preset molds, patters, and blueprints of my father’s life were gone and dissolved from my life, vanishing before my very eyes. I became a free and dignified man, apart from my father, given a clean slate upon which I could begin scripting a life that was truly my own. And as time would progress, I would begin understanding my mother’s love and wisdom, her desires and goals of shaping me into a man of great character, a man who would grow to know the true meaning of love, honor, dignity, and respect.”

<<< >>>

"Even though our lives and circumstances were very different, the author captivated my life while sharing the truth of his life!"

"I understood everything, as patterned in relationship with the father of my own children!"

"The absence of Love, brought negative consequences to the lives of my siblings and me! We are still paying for it!"

"Reversing Thrust is so intriguing! I'm amazed by the author's journey into realization, personal understanding and spiritual healing! I have so many questions!"

"There is so much truth in this book! This subject is huge!

Reversing Thrust