FamilyRoseSus

22h ago 3 min read

THE FAMILY DISPUTE THAT NEVER LEFT US

I am the second daughter of my father. My parents had five children together—three boys and two girls. I am one of the two girls. Later, my parents separated, and my father married another woman. That marriage produced three more children, making eight of us in total. Growing up was not easy for us financially. My father used to have a regular job, but at some point, he stopped working because he decided to dedicate himself fully to pastoral work. He believed it was his calling, and we respected that, but the reality was that there were five children at home depending on him. Things became difficult very quickly. The family dispute that changed everything happened when I was still young. My father had received some money from the sale of a piece of family property. We were all expecting that money to be used to settle our school fees, rent and other pressing needs. Instead, he announced that he wanted to use a large portion of it to establish a church and rent a bigger place for his ministry. My mother was furious. She told him, "You cannot use money meant to take care of your children to build a church when some of your children don't even know how they will return to school." That argument became bigger than anyone expected. My father accused my mother of not supporting his calling, while my mother accused him of abandoning his responsibilities as a father. We children were in the house listening to everything. My eldest brother eventually spoke up. He was still young, but he was old enough to understand that something was wrong. He told my father that he didn't care about the church and only wanted his father to take care of his family. My father got angry and said something that I don't think any of us ever forgot. He told us that if we truly believed in God, we would understand his sacrifice and stop questioning his decisions. That statement broke something in the family. My mother eventually left with us for some time. We moved around, struggled with school fees and sometimes depended on relatives for help. My father continued with his pastoral work, and the distance between him and us kept growing. When he later married another woman and had three more children, the bitterness became even deeper. Some of my siblings felt that he had abandoned us and started another family as though the first five children didn't exist. My father, on the other hand, always felt that we never respected him or supported his calling. Years have passed. We are no longer children. We have grown into adults with our own lives, but that old wound never really healed. Whenever my father gives something to his younger children, my siblings remember what we went through. Whenever he talks about sacrifice and family, someone brings up the years we struggled while he was chasing his ministry. Sometimes I wonder if we are angry about the money or if we are actually angry because we wanted our father to choose us when we were children. The painful part is that we all still love him in our own way. But there is so much resentment that even a simple family gathering can become uncomfortable. We are eight siblings now, but it doesn't always feel like one family. Sometimes I look at us and wonder: Can a family survive decades of resentment, or are some childhood wounds simply too deep to heal?