For Life

For all my life, I've only wanted one thing: True Love.
And this is not going to be sappy because I'm not talking about Prince Charming.
There are just so many different types of love out there: the love from another as a life partner, as a friend, as a best friend; love for yourself, for your family, for the world and strangers, for your work. Love, in other words, stands for so many other things: passion, compassion, commitment, determination, attachment, insistence, persistence, endurance, and most importantly, truth.
All my life, I have never known my beginnings. I have never met my biological father, and although I have been blessed by God with a loving step-father and I do have a great mother and the best, although craziest, little sister in the world, sometimes... I can't help but wonder how things would have been with my real father.
I have an understanding that things happen for a reason, and with that in mind, my mother tells me that my father was an atrocity of a man. And I believe her. The last image of my father was ripped away from my mother and I at my own doing. The memory is vivid in my mind: I was only four years old and my mother finally told me that the person I thought was my father was actually not. And with those confusing words uttered, she slipped from her dress pocket a small passport sized photo of my real father. His name is/was Frank and his last name was something like this: In-gen-jack. He's Polish and I don't know if that's spelled or hyphenated correctly. She showed me that picture, and I took it into my little hands, and I boldly tore it to pieces and threw the shreds away. I look at my mother's confused face and with compassion in my voice, I let her know that I loved her, and that we didn't need him. I hugged her, feeling her bosom rise softly as her cold tears fell on my golden hair.
That was the only picture we had of him. And now, because of me, it's gone. I do not regret my actions as a child, because, if you think about it, the innocence of a child--as I was in the moment--could not have been wrong. I knew, in that moment, that my mother was going to be all the parent I could ever want or need.
To this day, I still know nothing of that man that helped create me, and at moments, I would like to change that. But in moments like this, where I have a clear understanding of Love, especially the love of my family and of myself, I can say with confidence and with determination, that he means nothing to me. Just as I mean nothing to him.
But I want it to be clear: I am not complaining, because I know I have it good. I have been blessed more than words can even describe, and I know this is all because of the Hands of a more Perfect and Only Heavenly Father. And that is all the Parent anyone can really ever want or need. Someone to truly be there with you, through thick and thin, and will still love you whether you mess up or not.
Love, in all its imperfection, is what drives this world, what is at the core of all motivations and all dreams. And I know that one day, you and I will finally awake from our dreams and start living in the love that so graciously surrounds us all.