Epilogue

My Inheritance

Scrolling through the email inbox on my phone, I froze: an email with my father’s name as the subject. It had been two months since the phone call with news of his death, and I’d heard nothing. This isolated conversation echoed of the girl who found a letter in the mailbox with familiar handwriting and foreign stamps. The possibility of what could be, but never was, written inside. Words that indicated potential for a relationship, for a father’s love, and then—nothing. Silence, forgotten again.

I pressed my finger on the phone’s screen and found a letter written in French. Like with the handwritten letters of years past, I skimmed through the words searching for the significant, but quickly realized my Spanish wasn’t going to help me with French as much as I thought it should. I did make out enough to know it was from a lawyer and had to do with my father’s estate. Normally emails like this are spam: a long-lost relative in a foreign country has died. But my unconventional life led me to know this was for real.

In the days that followed, I worked at translating the letter, using a conglomerate of Google translate, my boss who had just returned from vacation in Paris, and Kristi’s high school exchange student. What I pieced together were words that sounded cold, distant, impersonal. The opposite of personal, of a person—me. Did I want to assert my position as his daughter? That’s what it appeared to be asking. Really? After all these years, I was the one with the burden of proof? This brought more grief than the news of his death. This question once again of where I fit. Where I belong.

Was it the translation that made it sound so cold? The legal language? The nuance was impossible to discern. No voice inflection. No body language to read. Just words on a screen, asking, “Are you his daughter or not?”

Days later, more emails arrived, but now with attachments. I opened them, and my heart skipped as I found my father’s familiar handwriting. Longhand letters that took me back to my girlhood. I reviewed them over and over, trying to make out both the handwriting and the language, searching for something. Something that said he loved me.

They were makeshift versions of his will with different dates, all from years earlier—one in Spanish, one in French, and one in Catalan—but only one of the three mentioned me. Did this mean he thought of me a third of the time? Or I had a third of the value of his other children? Why did I even care after all these years? I’d moved on. Hadn’t I?

References to God’s inheritance in the Bible flashed to my mind. I’d never really paid attention to them; the language seemed antiquated and irrelevant. Now I had new clarity. God mentions inheritance for a reason. Inheritance, what we get when our father dies, speaks to our value in his eyes. I knew I’d read it in the Bible somewhere, but where? I found Ephesians 1:11 (NLT), where God says, “Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for he chose us in advance, and he makes everything work out according to his plan.”

We are united with Christ. I’d felt his sacrifice. With every burden I carried, every grief lived, I felt closer to Jesus, who took on the burdens of the world. Every moment I loved my children, my husband, my mother, I better understood his love, united with him more closely with each passage.

We have received an inheritance from God. His promise not of an easy life but of a life everlasting. Lasting ever. Forever. Together with him.

He chose us in advance. It’s true I’d felt chosen by God. Picked out of the crowd and known. Ever since I’d felt found, I knew I was no accident to him.

He makes everything work out according to his plan. Not that he planned it all, but he uses it all, he makes it all work for his purpose. Not mine. Not ours. Not the thief in the night’s. But his.

Days later, I received another email in my inbox. It was from my older sister. A surprise, but something I’d been hoping for, something less formal, more personal, without lawyers. She had typed and translated our father’s handwritten, makeshift wills into Spanish so I could better understand them. She wanted to know if I was okay with fulfilling his wishes. I could now see with certainty that I was mentioned in only one of the wills. The other two, not at all. That my siblings could choose what artwork I received, if any. The sting burned more intensely than I expected that they had so much power in determining my value. I wanted my father to see me as his, and this felt like I was an afterthought. Like a secondary citizen.

Part of me wanted to fight. To stand up and shout, “This is rightfully mine! This! This title of daughter. I will not be ignored anymore; I will get what I deserve!”

Interesting hearing those words in my ear: “get what I deserve.” Because none of us do. That’s the gift of grace. None of us deserve God’s love, and yet it’s what he left when he died. An inheritance of forgiveness. Of acceptance. Of love.

Mostly I just wanted the whole situation to disappear. Dealing with it sounded exhausting.

“What should I do?” I asked Derek.

“Do you feel like you need to be recognized as his daughter? Is there something in you that needs that acknowledgment, separate from any money?”

“I don’t think so.” And despite those pangs of hurt, I really didn’t. “But this doesn’t just impact me,” I said. “Should I be fighting for something on behalf of our family? For our kids?” Really I meant, should I be fighting for money? Did I owe it to Derek and the girls to push for something that could help our family?

“You don’t want to fight.” Derek’s look reminded me he knew me better than anyone. “And it’s not like we’ve been counting on any money.”

That was true. I loved my husband. He wanted what was best for my heart and not our checking account.

“What I really want is for them to hear me. To say I’m here. I’ve always been here.”

“Then say it.”

He was right. My sister’s email was asking for a response, giving me a chance to confess my life’s hurts. To say things that had gone unsaid for a lifetime. And maybe I was finally ready to say them. I didn’t need an inheritance of money because I had an inheritance of grace. I hadn’t understood that earlier—as a girl, as a college student, as a newlywed, as a new mom. But I’d grown, matured, in confidence of who I was. Of who defined me. I could say what I needed to without fear of the consequences because my inheritance of grace was permanent. I could and would cash in on that.

I took my laptop into our bedroom, closed the door, and sat on the floor, my back against the wall. From where I was sitting, I could see myself in the full-length mirror. My eyes. So much like my father’s with their piercing blue and the dark circles underneath. But there was more than genetics staring back at me. I saw in them a life journeyed, with more still to go. These eyes looking back were starting to have creases on the side. Wrinkles? I wasn’t ready, but those hints at wrinkles told a story. My eyes had seen a lot. What will they look like thirty years from now? What will they have seen? I wondered.

Looking back at the computer and the empty screen, I slowly inhaled. I was supposed to be good at written communication. But this required a level of crafting I wasn’t used to. Cultural and language differences, family dynamics, and history called for straightforward, concise verbiage, but I wanted those words to echo my desire to love my afar family despite our years and miles apart. To extend grace from my grace-soaked heart.

Despite all of the constraints of language and awkward circumstances, I tried to let the words flow freely. I attached a picture of me and Derek and the girls sitting on our front porch earlier that month. I ended with these words:

Although this is a matter of the estate, please know this is also a matter of the heart for me. I have felt forgotten by my father much of my life. I cannot replace what I longed for so much as a girl—a relationship with my father. I have made no efforts in recent years to contact him. I decided after my last visit it was too painful, and I needed to move forward with the family Derek and I are making.

I ask that you remember me in this process, if nothing else, to symbolize a shift in the legacy left. I ask that you not forget me, but recognize that I am also his child.

I hit the send button and looked up at my reflection in the mirror, thankful. I didn’t have to worry about the response because I was found before I realized how lost I was. Thankful my inheritance was grace everlasting. That I didn’t have to wait for it or fight for it. It was now. Not because it was rightfully mine, not because I had to prove my position, but because God, the artist of all things true and beautiful, loved me, called me into existence, claimed me as his daughter, and never left.

But me he caught—reached all the way

from sky to sea; he pulled me out

Of that ocean of hate, that enemy chaos,

the void in which I was drowning.

They hit me when I was down,

but GOD stuck by me.

He stood me up on a wide-open field;

I stood there saved—surprised to be loved!

GOD made my life complete

when I placed all the pieces before him.

When I got my act together,

he gave me a fresh start.

Now I’m alert to GOD’s ways;

I don’t take God for granted.

Every day I review the ways he works;

I try not to miss a trick.

I feel put back together,

and I’m watching my step.

GOD rewrote the text of my life

when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes.[6]