Father’s Day: The Father Who Stayed

This Fathers Day feels different.

For years, Fathers Day has held tension for me because my understanding of a father was complicated. Listen to EP 118 on Raw Thoughts Podcast to hear the unveiling of my father wounds [listen here]. This episode has steadily remained in the top 5 episodes since releasing, and I believe it opens a dialogue to how so many other people have felt growing up.

I knew what it felt like to hear words spoken over me that no child should carry:
You are a mistake. You are worthless. You do not belong here.

And when those words come from someone who helped create you, they settle into places deeper than logic. They become engrained into your belief system and make you believe that is the way life is. That if your own father thinks these things, and speaks these things, then others have the same thinking towards me. I began trying to earn my worth. Trying to prove my value. All to be enough.

I did that.

I accomplished.
I achieved.
I cared for everyone else.

Hoping, that if I could care for people, I would never make them feel the emptiness that I did myself. But underneath all of it, there was still a quiet question:
“If my own father could think I am a mistake...what does that say about me, it must be true?”

Yet while I was questioning myself, God had already been answering it.

He placed someone in my life who stepped into what fatherhood could look like, my step up dad. Not by a title he filled, rather the actions he showed.

As a young girl he was present to teaching me new ways of thinking, sharing how consequences impacted my life and stood beside me when I failed, sharing lessons rather than shame with me.

Growing up, I didn’t fully understand what I was being shown.

Instead, I looked elsewhere for the answer.

I tried answering that question myself, in all of the wrong ways. Filling the void I felt with achievement, accomplishments, men, alcohol, sex, drugs and forgetting. You see, when people are accomplishing their goals in life, you don’t typically stop and ask “what’s wrong with them?”

From my perspective, it was all I knew what to do. Make myself never seem worthless to others. Make people believe that I had everything together and that I was not a mistake. My work became my own personal worth.

During a 12-step recovery for morals and values as a part of my healing, I remember answering a question: “what does your earthly father and heavenly father have in common?”

Once again I felt the complexity come on. My biological father was filled with wickedness with his words, his actions and demeanor. He resembled what I felt like the devil would be like. In contrast my step dad showed patience, mercy, understanding and grace. Both examples exemplifying my confusion and the beliefs I was battling.

My mind could understand love, but my body still expected rejection.

My body still believed what my biological dads words said. His voice replayed in my head, fearing that anyone else would hear what it was saying. So despite my step up dad being present and showing me a new way of life, I couldn’t whole heartedly accept it as truth. Couldn’t he see I was damaged goods? Why would he want me, if my own dad didn’t? I feared accepting love.

It wasn’t until I received my heavenly fathers love open heartedly, that I could see the blessings He provided me with. I didn’t need to rehearse those words any longer, because the Bible, Jesus words took power of what the truth was. I am loved, I am worthy and I am a child of God.

I have learned over the years as my faith has grown stronger I can see how God was there with me all along. He provided me with someone to teach me lessons, someone who supported me through times where I felt like I failed, yet showed unconditional love and gave me a perspective of learning for every situation I had faced.

“Even if my father and mother abandon me, the Lord cares for me.” — Psalm 27:10

“For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear. Instead, you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father!’” — Romans 8:15

As a Paramedic, I struggled to understand what it meant to be covered by the blood of Christ.

Until one day, I had a vision of having a blood transfusion. His blood replacing what was poisoned. Renewing my spirit, changing my truth. Our brains create new pathways through neuroplasticity. And though many people couldn’t see my wounds, they were slowly healing. Our God is a God of miracles.

So if you are reading this today and your father spoke words over you that broke your heart and later broke your spirit for life. I want you to know:

Those words do not define you.

You are not a mistake.
You are not too broken.
You are not forgotten.
You are known by name.
You are enough just as you are.
You are deeply loved.
You are saved.

Your Father in Heaven already knows every chapter of your life.

And He is waiting patiently for you to call on Him. He is ready to answer with love, grace and mercy.

If today fills you with gratitude for a father who showed you love.

Praise God.

Because every good father reflects parts of Him, and the impact to others is not gone unnoticed.

So this Fathers Day, I thank Jesus for both fathers He brought into my life. One showed me what wounds can do. One showed me what love can do. And my Heavenly Father showed me who I truly am.

To my step up dad, thank you. Because being a dad was never about a title. It was always about choosing to love, unconditionally.