To the father-less on Father’s Day

I used to hate Father’s Day. It was a day that highlighted the pain that was deep inside and in which I felt lost and alone. It was a day I wanted to avoid yet the reminders were all around and whilst others celebrated I was trapped in anguish, pain and the feeling of abandonment.

You see, my father died just after I turned 13. Afterwards I didn’t talk about it. Life carried on and I didn’t grieve, didn’t process, didn’t work through it… I just bottled every feeling deep inside and kept going. For years and years. With hindsight the pain seeped out and was expressed in various ways, but was generally hidden.

A few years ago the Lord showed me that as a little girl I had made a vow that I would never let anyone be my father again. Little did I know that this even extended to God Himself.

Though I had been a believer and follower of Jesus for many years, in the depths of me there had been a ‘disconnect’ in some way. I had battled to know God as Father, to trust Him fully, to really believe that He loves me and cares for me. I’d given mental ascent to knowing God as my Father – I’d known it is the truth and sought to believe it – but there was a gaping chasm between that head knowledge and the reality of knowing it in the depths of my heart.

The fact was I didn’t have a father who was physically present through my teenage years and throughout adulthood. I didn’t have a father to be proud of me, to encourage me, to give me direction and advice, to hug me, to hold me, to walk me down the aisle, to pray for me, to call me, to welcome me home, to visit. There was a barren finality and lack of hope about getting what my heart craved and longed for.

My God is a Redeemer and the God Who Sees. In an encounter I had with Him a few years ago, during a week of 24-7 prayer, He revealed that as a little child of just two I closed off my heart. I shut down parts of it and unknowingly they had remained closed, afraid, hurting, broken, in spite of my conscious desire and fight to surrender my whole heart and to yield everything to the One who created me. I didn’t know of the closed off places, but the Lord did. I didn’t know the way to open them, but God did. He’d been working over months, weeks, even years, to draw me in and to soften me, to build trust, to bring awareness and revelation.

In spite of the greatest longing and need of my heart to know God as my Father, the reality was that I had closed my heart to letting anyone be my father, to even letting God be my Father. In His love He brought me to the place of letting go of my grasp, my grip, my fear, and to letting Him into every room of my heart, every little bit of it, and to yielding trust to Him so that He can be my Father, allowing Him to be my Father and letting Him Father me. During the encounter I REALLY became His daughter. I let Him adopt me. I let Him come in. I let Him in every place – only by His grace, in His infinite and beautiful love and tenderness.

He didn’t prise my heart open – He just gently led and invited and drew me in. PRAISE to the ONE who SEES! He knows the deepest, most hidden things, the pain, the wounds, the hindrances and blockages that we have no idea are even there, and as we yield to Him and seek Him, He knows absolutely how to break us free of them and bring us to freedom, to deliver us from things too strong for us.

Although that was almost 3 years ago, I still feel like I am near the beginning of a journey of knowing God as my Father, a journey of allowing myself to be fathered by a perfectly loving Father. It feels very vulnerable but I know it is to be treasured and that as I trust Him it will be more wonderful than I can comprehend.

God is a perfect Father. No man could ever be. But God gives the privilege of being a father to a multitude of men. Some are amazing as fathers, some are pitiful as fathers. Some are fully present, some are totally absent. We are living in a generation that knows so much fatherlessness. There is so much pain, so much loss, so much absence. And for those that ache and are anguished on Father’s Day, I relate. Yet there is HOPE! God is the perfect Father, and He wants to be Father to you.

Today I was thankful for Father’s Day. I could rejoice. God has given me an amazing husband who is a wonderfully present, engaged, loving, tender, God-fearing father to his girls. I’ve learnt so much about what a father is from him. And I see others being wonderful fathers and observe the love they lavish on their children too (whether grown or still little) and know they reflect something of the love God my Father has for me. Sometimes when I don’t ‘feel’ God’s love or know consciously His Father’s heart towards me, I still crave and ache for the physical presence of a father, but I also see that He does provide the love of a father in a hug, a hand on the shoulder, a prayer, an encouragement from the Godly men and fathers who He has placed around me. I am thankful for them and thankful for their example and love. And I celebrate those fathers today. Thank you for seeking God’s heart and expressing His love for your children. May the love He has put in you, fathers, overflow and extend to those who are father-less. There are so many who need you.