Brian hasn't heard from his 23-year-old daughter in three years. A counselor connects his desperate attempts to reconnect to an old trauma with a child named Joey, showing how Brian's pattern of over-investing leads to feeling inadequate. The message: God showed him he is enough, regardless of her response.
The biggest issue I have is, you know, I have a 23-year-old daughter that has been out of my life for about 3 years. And the longer this goes on, I feel like the same part of me that, you know, can just eliminate people out of my life, it's starting to happen, right? Because I'm starting to get super frustrated. It's been 3 years and, you know, I reach out to her all the time and I never get a response. So I got a little angry, you know, I called her out. I said, "What are you doing? Why? You can't come see us? Like, you're less than 5 minutes away." And I let the anger get the best of me and I asked her to remove me from her location services 'cause it was killing, it was tearing me up knowing that she was here and she wasn't even making the slightest of attempt to come, you know, and I couldn't figure it out.
You know, we had a great relationship, I thought, He was there and she wasn't responding. Look at the parallels between this and the Joey situation, right? Yeah, that you put— you said, I put my heart and soul into that kid.
I did, man.
The same way that you did with Joey that day at the creek, trying to bring him back. Yeah, felt the same. Yeah, no matter what I do, it's not enough.
Kind of feel that in a whole bunch of different aspects of my life. You put it like that.
Yeah. You know what God showed you that day at the creek?
That I am enough.
That he was with you.
He was, man.
That he was with you. That the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. That he's been with you this whole time. He's never gonna leave you, he's never gonna forsake you, that he's with you. And even though things don't turn out the way we always want them to, God's still with us. But there's an opportunity today for you to forgive yourself, to forgive yourself for what happened with Joey. And you need to have a conversation with that 10-year-old version of you. You need to let him come and sit on your lap, and he needs to tell his side of the story, and you need to listen, and you need to tell him the truth. And then I would write a letter of atonement to your daughter, and I would tell your daughter about the Joey situation and about how the Joey situation is connected to you losing the relationship with her and the fact that you have you have avoided it because it hurts you and it breaks your heart, and to apologize and ask for forgiveness for any way that you might have hurt her in the process. And what that'll do is it'll clear up your conscience. It'll give you a clear conscience. And for you to remember, bro, that you did the best you could. It was a responsibility that adults had that day that they didn't fulfill on, and it was sitting you down, getting eye-to-eye level with you, getting in the truck with you, taking a ride with you, and telling you, hey, Brian, You did the best you could. It's not your fault. This was an accident, and you didn't cause this. You didn't create it. Brian, you couldn't have prevented it. You didn't see it happening. Brian, you did the best you could. And Brian, you even went down to the creek and even tried to resuscitate him and bring him back to life. You tried to— you tried everything you could.
