Feeling Fatherless on Fathers' Day

I have moments that I feel fatherless.  My natural father died this past November.  My step-father, who raised me from age 7, died in 2006.  My first wife’s father, who was a father to me from my teens, died in 2000. 

Much of my childhood I felt fatherless.  My step-father seemed cold and distant when he was sober, briefly warm and loving with a few drinks.  But he became dangerously angry and verbally threatening when really drunk.  My natural father wasn’t there (See “Lament for a Father I Hardly Knew).  As an adult I came to know that my step-father had always loved me in his own way, as much as he was able.  I suspect the same may have been true of my natural father.  But the 10 year old boy didn’t understand that.  I had a hunger and a wound and a feeling of incompleteness.  I felt inferior to schoolmates who had fathers who seemed involved in their lives.

God in His merciful providence brought good out of that, I believe.  I was determined to be the father I never had if I ever had sons.  I was not a perfect father – just ask any of my three sons.  But I was there for them and I tried to be involved in their lives. 

My freshman year in high school God brought me to saving faith in Jesus Christ.  After a year of trying to sort out what that was about, in my sophomore year I got grounded in a Bible teaching church.  A Sunday School teacher and the pastor filled some of the father void in my life.  But more importantly I discovered the truth of Psalm 68, ^ESV  Psalm 68:5 Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation. (Psa 68:5 ESV).

I began consciously looking to God as my Father.  I turned to Him for direction, correction, assurance.  Loving He has kept bringing human father figures into my life.  He knows there are times we need someone with skin on them!

So this Fathers’ Day weekend I mourn the deaths of my earthly fathers.  I miss them.  I rejoice in what they positively did for me.  I grieve what their broken humanity kept them from doing.  I grieve that my brokenness kept me from reaching out to them more.  There are moments I feel fatherless.  And I chose by His grace to lean on my Father who has never failed me.

If you’re wondering, this was written with tears.  Tears and prayer, pain and hope.  Hope that I will see some of those men again and we will have talks we couldn’t have here.  Hope that the failures I had as a father were mixed with enough strengths by God’s grace that my sons have more of a foundation than I had.  Hope this blog might spur one father to seek God’s help to do a better a job.