Lily's return

A professional psychologist returns to speak to her estranged father

         Lily studied herself in the mirror. The purple suit made her look serious without compromising on feminine beauty. The skirt was beneath her knees and respectable but showed off her figure. The jacket was business-like without being too conservative. It was the sort of attire she would have worn to court when providing testimony relating to an assessment of the psychological state of the accused. As she approached her father's door she felt a little like the accused in one of those court cases about to see the Judge. She'd chosen comfortable but fashionable shoes to go with her suit. She was tall enough and did not need high heels. On either side of the pathway to her father's door grew the lavender that her mother had planted a decade before. The familiar smell made her smile but did not ease the nervousness inside her.

         She noticed that the paint had faded on the door and needed a touch-up. It was one of those projects on her father's to-do lists before she left to live with her mother after the divorce. They had intended to do this together. She recognized chalk marks on the wall scrawled by herself and her brother many years before. She summoned her courage and rang the bell.

         The blind was down so she was not visible to the person inside. She could hear the footsteps approach and then the door opened. It was her father, a little older looking but still fit and healthy, exercise was his thing and she was pleased he had not lost his discipline over the years.

         "Hello Daddy," she said.

         Tears came into his eyes, For a moment he seemed torn between hugging her and slamming the door in her face but then he opened the door wide backed away and gulped a response, "Hi, come in."

         She removed her shoes in the hallway, a time-honored tradition she had not forgotten and they moved into the dining area.

         "Can I get you a coffee?" She nodded and they moved into the Kitchen where he put the kettle on and got some coffee out of the cupboard.

         "You changed your brand, where's the Nescafe?"

         "Oh you know, Brexit and all that, it is hard to find any British brands these days."

         "How are you?"

         He grimaced, looked at her, studied her a moment, and wiped his hand on the back of his neck. "Things are OK. I am still working but will retire next year. I have missed you. I was pleased to hear that you finished your studies so well. You are so smart and grown-up looking, tell me about yourself."

         "Well, I got my dream job."

         "So you are a proper psychologist."

         "Yes, I specialize in criminal psychology and make assessments of inmates seeking parole and also accused people facing prosecution."

         Her father smiled, "Yes that fits, I guess there is a bit of your mother in the choice to do criminal psychology - her being in the police and everything."

         "Yes," Lily smiled, her father's mind was still keen and full of insight, she remembered how they used to talk for hours and wondered why she'd walked away from that.

         Her father then asked her the question she had been trying to avoid for much of the last decade, "It is wonderful to see you Lily, but why has it been so long? What did I do to drive you away from me? I only loved you and wanted the best for you."

         Lily walked toward the lounge indicating her father should follow. They both found spaces on the worn green couch and put their coffees on the table. Books littered many of the surfaces, lay in piles on the floor and the bookshelves were overstacked also.

         "I could not handle the split between you and my mother. You offered the choice between the two of you and I went to live with Mama. That was the right choice then as she was supportive of the counseling and you were not. It was too painful to walk between your worlds at that time."

         "I didn't understand why you needed counseling from those people or how they could help you."

         "They saved my life, Daddy, they showed me ways to cope."

         "They are a bunch of atheist humanists lost in darkness, their minds filled with pseudo-scientific rationalizations about reality that distort our perception of the human condition and problem."

         Lily smiled but then spoke in a more serious tone, "That sounded rehearsed Daddy, like you have thought about this for a while, but consider this. I was near to killing myself and they stopped me. I am alive to have this conversation with you because of that."

         "I do not believe that you would have ever done that, your life is much too important for such stupidity. Why didn't you tell me how unhappy you were, we could have prayed together, we could have talked it through. The better solution was with God not with those heathens."

         "I am a believer also, I have not lost my faith but I believe God wants us to explore the mind with all its mysteries and in doing so I believe we can come to some conclusions."

         Her father laughed, "Oooo clever you know I cannot disagree with that statement but it is what comes next that makes the difference isn't it? Are you looking in the mind with biblical assumptions centered on God or humanistic ones centered on man?"

         "If God made humankind then don't you think He left something of his design in it? If we use the brains He gave us to explore the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious worlds of the mind. Don't you think we might find something useful there?"

         "Useful yes, but always tainted by sin, always corrupted by false assumptions and the barriers our sins place between us and Christian insight, We are too stubborn to admit our faults and so our faults are always the reason we cannot see clearly."

         "That is why we often work in teams and our analysis is subject to peer review. In the case of criminals if we say a man is clean and unlikely to re-offend and he goes and does that then that is a clear example of mistaken analysis and requires a revision. The process itself helps to eliminate these biases."

         "Maybe but it is like dressing a pig in a wedding dress. It looks pretty but it is still a pig."

         Lilly giggled, "What a pig! Are you for real?... How on earth?..." She shook her head.

         "It was the image that came into my mind when you said it. You are not wearing a ring, Do you have anyone in your life?"

         Lily paused the conversation had turned more deeply personal, she felt a little uncomfortable but decided it was time to speak, "No not right now. There was someone but it did not work out. My therapist says I have trust issues..."

         Her father rose from the couch walking around the room. "I am so sorry that your mother and I were not able to work through our differences inside the marriage. Divorce is a horrible burden and the pain of ours is borne by our kids."

         "John seems to have shrugged it off, I understand he is engaged to be married."

         "You speak with him, that's good."

         "Just WhatApps I have not seen him in a while. He stopped talking with Mama after the divorce like you did and I did not think that was fair on her."

         "She was the one who chose to walk away. I heard what you said about after-marriage counselling but that was utterly pointless. Like two doctors talking at a funeral about how to save the guy in the box's life."

         Lily paused, "Interesting analogy but that was not the point of counseling. The point was about me and my need to work through the past to be free of it for the future."

         "Is that the psychodynamic crap that the doctor was talking about that time I came to the center? I remain convinced that was not what you needed either and the counseling process was the problem."

         "Daddy I am that doctor now. I am a psychologist now. Do you think what I do is all crap?"

         Her father hesitated, made as if to speak, but stopped himself, shook his head, sat down, and then finally collected his thoughts.

         "My hope for you was that you would become a healer of the mind. I could not envisage that happening with the kind of secular training I knew was involved in your desired profession. I still have my doubts. But the thing is even though I hate, yes hate is the right word, even though I hate psychology I can never hate you. Even though I despise the humanistic assumptions and conceptual framework of so-called cognitive psychology I can never despise you. I love you now as much as when I first held you in my arms all those years ago in the hospital. So you confront me with a choice. I believe you have a spiritual destiny that will shake this world and transform the lives of many. But you come to me now dressed in the clothes of the enemy."

         "You don't like my suit!" Lily said playfully.

         Her father smiled and shook his head, " I might be a little biased but you could wear anything and make it look good, no I meant the figurative clothes of your profession. The point is I believe in you and so if you can tell me that you can reconcile the faith that you have with what you do then I, as your father, am just going to have to trust you for that and support you in that. I paid for your studies all those years for that reason - I never stopped believing in you. I guess you are the only one who can truly know if what you do has brought you closer to God and His calling on your life or pushed you further away from it. From my perspective, psychology robbed me of my daughter for a decade. How can I therefore regard it as a good thing? I hoped that ultimately having mastered their trade you would see through these guys and return to me."

         "To find faith?"

         "Yes, to find restoration of purpose and calling in God but with the experience of having tried in your strength and failed to find true meaning. That is the precondition for profound reconciliation with God. That after all was my path also. In your age group, I even tried to invent my religion before realizing that Jesus and the bible were infinitely better than anything I could design myself."

         "But I never lost my faith. God was there with me while I was studying. I am not going to pretend that I have not had my doubts or challenges because of my studies but I am still a believer. Do you remember that poster with the footprints?"

         "Where there are two sets of footprints and then suddenly one and the person asks God why did you abandon me when I needed you most and the Lord answers - I did not abandon you. When you only see one set of tracks that is the time I carried you..."

         Her father started to cry. Lily moved closer to him on the couch and put an arm around him

         "So are we friends again?" she asked.

         "I am and always will be your father and I will always love you whatever I think about your profession," her father replied wiping the tears from his eyes. A little embarrassed now.

         Later as she left Lily's heart felt lighter than it had for years.

W/C: 1976