Michelle St Claire

My Father's Soup Michelle St Claire

"In that moment, I said a prayer of my own to God. With little Sara sleeping blissfully on my lap, I offered up a prayer to God for my father. I asked God to heal him and turn him back into a human being, back into flesh and blood. I asked God to tell him that we were suffering far beyond what we could handle. I asked Him to show my father the beauty of raising children into adulthood, of being there for them and worrying relentlessly about them as human parents do. I imagined my father must have had an accumulation of childhood wounds that contributed to the formation of his new identity. So I begged God to heal those wounds and make him a new man. As I prayed for my father, I realized that, in a way, I was loving him. Praying for my father was like helping him to carry his burdens. I missed him."



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My Father's Soup is a beautiful tale of eventual triumph in the midst of parental divorce told through the words of a precocious tween writer. As Nora comes to forgive her father, she learns the meaning of carrying each other's burdens to fulfill the law of Christ as explained in the Letter to Galatians in the Christian bible.