A Letter To God: Regarding My Parents

Dear God,

Thank you for blessing me with the parents I had. They did the best they could considering their own spiritual issues, personal problems and levels of development.

Though they were troubled as parents, and were eventually divorced from each other, they provided me with the lessons necessary to succeed in a very challenging world.

And they helped me to resolve some of my own Karmic issues.

Without them, I could not have fully appreciated a loving, stable, supportive home, a home that as an adult I was determined to create, one I had only known from television sitcoms.

I could not have become the loving and devoted father to Anne's and my three sons without knowing what it was like to have a father who often didn't honor his family obligations, or even show up when he promised to do so.

I could not have been as gentle with my sons, without knowing what it was like as a boy to be beaten by my father. But then my mother beat me, and my sister Stephanie as well for that was sometimes the only way they knew.

When my father left when I was about 7 years old, and my two sisters were 4 and the other a baby, it was the best thing that could have happened to me.

Soon my mother made me "the man of the house" and I learned to take responsibility for myself and often my sisters.

My mother was tough as nails, but she had to be.

It was seldom her way to be gentle and loving, but it was through her I found my courage and my voice, and with her tough love encouragement, the ability to standup to practically anything. And she taught me to be street smart.

She also tried to guide me to become the caliber of man that would make any woman proud, as she would talk about what a real man should be.

Without her, I never could have become a successful, action driven entrepreneur that founded a major business nor taken risk in real estate investment.

I've never been alone, as you surrounded me with spiritual guides, who in my adult life have actively communicated with me, now at age 69 more than ever.

But I also had Uncle Gene, my father's younger brother as the voice of reason and of support. He died this year at 86, and he played an important role all of my life.

Not only do I harbor no bitterness to my parents, I love them, forgive them and would express my appreciation to them for helping to make of me the person that I have become.

Ironically, my father became a top notch loving grandfather, for at a later time in his life, he had come to appreciate what he had forsaken at an earlier time.

I too have made many mistakes and if Anne, our sons and others contributed to this letter, they could easily point them out.

But I thank you for this marvelous journey of life, one filled with love, good health, relationships with many wonderful people, and so many opportunities to grow and find fulfillment.

You have blessed me time and again and I hope to have honored you by my actions.

Anything "I" have ever accomplished has actually been "We" as people in spirit and people in body have played a vital role. But then that's how I believe you meant it to be as we all make this journey of life together.

Dick