Crowned by Grace: From Daddy’s Love to the Father’s Embrace (Part 2)

Life didn’t feel real anymore. Everything I knew—everything that made me feel safe—was gone. We left our little home in Paterson and moved in with my grandparents. Their house was warm, full of love and familiar smells, but to me, it felt hollow. No amount of hugs could bring back what I lost.

The soundtrack of those days was a soft, melancholic hum of Boyz II Men’s “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday.”I clung to the hope that this wasn’t forever. Daddy would come back. I was sure of it. Surely, he was just resting. God was borrowing him for a little while, right? Any day now, he’d walk through the door and hold me again.

But days turned into weeks, and he never came.

My mom, now the only anchor in my world, was trying her best to figure it all out. I didn’t realize it then, but she had been thrown into survival mode. She went from being a stay-at-home mom to a single mother of two. Overnight, she became the breadwinner, the driver, the fixer, and the protector.

She drove Daddy’s car now—a bittersweet comfort. It was a piece of him still with us. But watching her behind the wheel wasn’t enough. It wasn’t him. And though she loved us fiercely, I could see it in her eyes: the exhaustion, the weight of everything she was carrying.

I wanted to feel safe again, the way I did when my dad was here. But I didn’t. Not at home. Not at school. Not anywhere.

School was a nightmare. I barely spoke English, and being a first-grader who couldn’t communicate felt like being dropped into the middle of a storm with no shelter. I carried a sadness no one seemed to notice and a confusion I couldn’t put into words.

At home, the adults around me were grieving too. They were too caught up in their own pain to see the storm brewing inside me. I felt invisible, unheard, and so very alone.

And so, the whispers in my heart began.

“Why did you take him, God?” I asked in the quiet of my mind.
“Why did you leave me with this pain? Don’t You see I need him? Don’t You care?”

As the years went on, the questions grew louder, and the pain found new ways to shape me. My father’s absence left cracks in my heart—cracks that other people seemed to find too easily.

I trusted too soon, loved too deeply, and hoped too much. Over and over, those cracks were filled with hurt. People who should have stayed didn’t. People who should have protected me failed. And people who should have shown me love did the opposite.

I began to believe that I wasn’t worthy of love, that everyone would leave eventually. And worse, that I didn’t deserve to feel safe.

The anger I carried toward God only grew. If He was supposed to be my Heavenly Father, why didn’t He step in? Why didn’t He shield me from the hurt? Why didn’t He give me back my dad?

For a long time, I lived in that anger. It was easier to push God away than to let Him in. Letting Him in meant facing the wounds I wasn’t ready to touch.

But even in my anger, even in the moments I screamed at Him or ignored Him altogether, God was there. Quiet. Patient. Waiting.

I couldn’t see it then, but His love was still holding me.

The journey to trust Him again—truly trust Him—took years. It took heartbreak, self-discovery, and moments of grace I didn’t deserve.

But my story doesn’t end here.

In Part Three, I’ll share how the wounds of abandonment and rejection began to heal and how God, in His mercy, began to reveal the safety and love I had been longing for all along.

Until then, I want you to know this: You are not alone. If you’ve felt abandoned, if you’ve felt rejected, if you’ve questioned whether you are worthy of love—this story is for you.

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” – Psalm 34:18

Stay with me. Let’s walk this journey together.

Bronx, NY. 1996