Why Him?

I've spent most of my life trying to answer a question that was never really about me.

I was seventeen the first time I heard it.

"Why him?"

My girlfriend was pregnant.

She was seventeen too.

We were both still in high school.

Her grandmother had raised her.

She had dreams for that little girl.

Dreams that, in a single afternoon, suddenly looked different.

I can still see her face.

Not angry.

Heartbroken.

And standing in front of her...

was me.

I wasn't angry either.

I was ashamed.

Ashamed that I had become the answer to a question no grandmother should ever have to ask.

I didn't resent her.

I believed I had earned the question.

I wasn't the young man she had imagined for her granddaughter.

I was a gang-affiliated kid trying to become someone before life decided who I would be.

I loved Gabby.

I know that now.

I knew it then.

With everything a seventeen-year-old knows about love.

But love didn't erase the pain I had just delivered to another human being.

Two years later, I married her.

Partly because I loved her.

Partly because I wanted to honor her family.

And partly because I wanted to become the man I wished her grandmother had seen that day.

So I worked.

I went to school at night.

Came home exhausted.

Raised children.

Earned degrees.

The streets slowly gave way to classrooms.

The gang kid slowly became a therapist.

Without realizing it, I was still trying to answer her question.

Every promotion.

Every diploma.

Every family milestone.

Every person I tried to help.

Somewhere deep inside, I hoped they all whispered the same reply.

"That's why him."

For a long time, I believed becoming a better man would finally settle the question.

Then life humbled me.

I discovered that a man can work with all his heart...

love with all his heart...

sacrifice with all his heart...

and still leave someone he loves feeling unseen.

There were moments when one of my children experienced me very differently than I experienced myself.

My first instinct was to defend my intentions.

To remember the overtime.

The night classes.

The exhaustion.

Everything I had carried.

Then something inside me became quiet enough to hear another truth.

My intentions belonged to me.

Their experience belonged to them.

Both could be true.

That realization changed more than my parenting.

It changed the way I see every relationship.

I've disappointed people I would have given my life for.

I've hurt people while trying to protect them.

I've mistaken love for understanding.

I've confused sacrifice with connection.

Good intentions are beautiful.

But they are not the same thing as being understood.

Looking back now...

I don't think her grandmother was asking,

"What's wrong with you?"

I think she was asking,

"What just happened to the little girl I raised?"

For most of my life, I heard judgment.

Today...

I hear grief.

The question never changed.

I did.

Maybe that's why one sentence has refused to leave me.

"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

For most of my life, I thought He was speaking about them.

These days...

I wonder if He was speaking about me.

Alextotle ❤️‍🔥