Father's Day is a toughie for guys who didn't grow up in homes with a dad. I get it. My dad split when I was four. That was probably for the best as my only recollections of him living in our house are sad and unworthy of even being described in detail. The next 30 years of my life, our relationship would best be described as a rocky emotional roller-coaster ride. We had this awkward dance of me wanting to know my dad closely, him wanting to know me, him trying to figure out what that looked like as a man who never knew his own dad, him trying to have relationships while wrestling with demons of alcoholism and maybe even some self-hate, me probably coming on too strong while trying to hide pain and even misunderstanding, and both of us pulling away for seasons to hurt and to avoid being hurt.
Father's Days were miserable. The unspoken pain between us was always the elephant in the room. So I always called and he always graciously answered. I'd usually mail a card that was shallow and ended with a punchline rather than tell a lie and buy a card that overstated or misstated our relationship. I couldn't figure out ways to honor my dad well and love him for who he was.
In saying all of that, I'm not trying to play the victim, and I am not trying to make a demon or a saint out of my dad. The past is past and has been a great teacher. My dad was a byproduct of not knowing his own dad; in fact, he was a great dad considering he had no real examples to follow and had been gripped by some demons of addictions long before he and my mom ever had children. Much of my jacked up thinking about my dad was my own inability to process things and carrying over and hanging on to in adulthood the thought patterns of a child rather than learning to think and feel like an adult.
So why do I write all of this? If my story is similar to yours in any way -- and especially if yours is still a story in process -- can I share some words of hope with you as one who, in many ways, has closed a chapter of my life with the passing of my dad in January 2014?
First off, if you had little or no relationship with your father, celebrate and honor the men in your life who acted like fathers. I assume you had and still have some men who showed you how a man ought to believe, live, love, and conduct himself in this life. For me, some of those men were saints I read about in books and longed to know but chose to learn from their example: Jim Elliot, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Billy Graham, and others. Others were men I knew and respected and even asked to lead me or teach me or pour into me: my grandfather, Onus Sanders; my pastors, Joe McDaniel and Denny Brinkman and others; Dennis Nix; Doug Nix; and my father-in-law, Warren Naylor and brother-in-law, Greg Jacobs. Great men who gave me nuggets of wisdom about being a dad, husband, godly man, servant, and leader -- some of them without ever realizing the impact they were having. I guarantee you had men in your life who play a similar role. And if you bear the scars of a broken or absent relationship with a dad, you will find a continued need for these men in your life. As a word of wisdom learned the hard way: Its not the job of these men to be your dad; its their role and privilege, if they choose to accept it, to be a coach and an example. Being our dad is not a job they signed up for or could ever fill.
Second, people always told me that God will be a Father to the fatherless. That made zero sense to me. I wanted God to be my Dad, but I couldn't have recognized a healthy relationship with a dad if it were handed to me on a silver platter. Here is what I have come to learn though: The best dads in this life only present a poor metaphor of the love of God. Further, we are fully loved by God the Father in Christ, signed and sealed with the Holy Spirit. This fierce, steady, relentless love is the love that sets us free. And when we experience that love well, we find that all other lesser loves can't fulfill in the same way. When we realize we are fully loved by God and our cups are full, we are free from the need to be loved. And then we find ourselves able to love and be loved without it saying anything about our worth or the worth of the other person, including our dads. God truly is the perfect Father, and knowing that freed me to love and be loved by my dad with no agenda.
Third, if your dad is living and you are a follower of Jesus, honor your dad this Father's Day and every day in an authentic way. Refuse to talk bad about him or even to let evil thoughts about him take up residence in your heart or mind. Don't deny or minimize the past; don't sugarcoat the present; but don't forget the future. Just as we are thankful that we are a work in progress, let's remember that our dads are too. I am thankful that what God begins in a life, he always sees through to the end.
With that in mind, finally, remember that God always gets the last word. Six months before he died of a massive heart attack, my dad had this intuition that his days were drawing to a close. He put away alcohol, became sweeter with my stepmom again, began to genuinely mend broken relationships, started attending church and pursuing Jesus, happily put sin to death, and -- four hours before he died -- confessed Christ as his Savior. I can tell you that the goodness of the grace of God became more brilliant when compared to the sadness of the tragedy of human sin. Just like we can't experience Easter Sunday without Good Friday, we can't experience restoration without brokenness, a scar of testimony without a wound of pain.
Don't give up hope. I hope for you that your relationship with your dad will become whole. I hope for your dad that he will come to Christ, become open to relationship, walk in intimacy with you. Just as much, I hope for you. I hope that you will know healing, peace, acceptance in the love of God (whether you ever experience the full love of your dad or not). Its never too late. God always gets the last word.
And that, my friends, leads me to the last thing I will say: The greatest lesson my dad ever taught me was his last lesson... That grace wins and Jesus saves -- not because we are good but because he is good. "Happy Father's Day."
