June 16, 2006 1:34 PM
Father to the fatherless
Those of you without a father - or without an authentic relationship with your father - may enjoy this piece which first appeared In World magazine for Father's Day 1998.
His Little Girl
Trusting the Heavenly Father after an earthly one fails
by Barbara Curtis
I remember the day my dad left. He knelt and hugged me and cried. The skimpy dress of a five year old girl couldn't protect me from the chill that gathered around my arms and legs. The scratchy tickly whiskers - would I feel them no more? The arms that felt so safe - would they be gone forever?What would it be like not to have a father?
The years to come provided harsh answers to those questions. Mine was not a carefree childhood. Shuffled with two brothers between foster home, relatives, and - when things worked out - my mother, I toughed out the tough times. My innocence gave way early on to a cynic’s world view: Don’t depend on anyone and no one will disappoint you.
As anyone without a father will agree, the loss doesn't end when you grow up. The scars are like the glossy, too-tight skin that grows over a deep wound. Beneath the protective cover lies too much tenderness.
For the longest time I didn’t know about the tenderness. I tended the gloss - taking control of my future, acquiring a good education, rising above the pattern of my family’s past. I guess you might say with no one to believe in, I learned to believe in myself.
Only when this unsustainable strategy dropped me down and out - and more alone than ever - did I finally face my fatherlessness.
So it was in my thirties -- sensing what was missing was spiritual -- that I finally launched a search for God. For someone like me the New Age movement held enormous appeal. Here I could wander into nooks and crannies, borrowing this and that to construct an image of god to mesh with my own deficiencies. Crippled by the lack of a real father in my life, seeing God only as some remote and impersonal force, my hope was that through understanding, I could appropriate the force - recognizing “God within me” -- then manipulate it to find happiness.
With my eyes on the ground, happiness was as high as I could aim my sight. I wouldn’t have thought to seek His love.
And yet how amazingly unconditional and enduring His love remained for me. No matter how I misunderstood him, how well he continued to understand me. How patiently He waited as I wandered -- for seven more years protecting me from harm, continuing to draw me nearer, gradually softening my heart.
My husband helped to soften me-- though I never could have told him then. Watching him father our children was like peeking through a frosted pane into a warm and cozy within. Although seeing my children experience a happy childhood was the next best thing to having one myself, how I wished sometimes to climb inside and receive that kind of love myself.
Oh, how ready I was the moment I first heard God was my father! How easy it was to believe He loved me, had a plan for my life, and through Jesus Christ would have relationship with me. Of course, I wanted a Father!
At last, I was someone’s little girl!
To this day, ten years later, I cannot approach God intellectually, but only as a child. Yet He has never asked me to do more. With no reservations, I feel His love: Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me. (Psalm 27:10)
Is it not a miracle that someone who missed an earthly father's love can be healed to receive the love of the Heavenly Father? But isn’t He the Jehovah Rapha, the God who heals?The greatest privilege of all: to call him Abba, Father.
According to Vine’s Word Dictionary, “Abba is a word framed by the lips of infants and betokens unreasoning trust. Father expresses an intelligent apprehension of the relationship. The two together express the love and intelligent confidence of a child.”
I remember once before he left, my father carrying me home in his arms as blood gushed from a jagged cut on my foot. I was four and I was frightened, hoping that my father could take care of me. But though that day he bound and stopped the bleeding, no earthly father could have healed the wounded heart he later left behind.
That hurt cried out for the love of a Heavenly Father.
And so I will always be His grateful little girl - trusting, dependent, and filled with faith in the arms that will never let me go.
Posted in Fathers, Holidays | Permalink
Comments
I have a lovely father, but your post made me cry nonetheless. Thanks so much for sharing this Barbara. Your "realness" keeps me coming back to your blog.
Posted by: Amy | June 16, 2006 3:06 PM
Thank you for that, Barbara. My father left when I was 17 or 18. Today, I don't even know where he lives, but I know he has started another family. It's hard to accept, even when at 18 you think you're an adult, that your father has essentially thrown away one family to start another. It's easy to feel you have been thrown away, too. Your post gives hope and comfort to people who don't have fathers or who don't have a relationship with them.
Posted by: Damselfly | June 16, 2006 6:39 PM
Dear Barbara,
I am like a little girl when I need God too, and I wondered how I could also have such a trust in the goodness of my Heavenly Father. So I do pour out my heart to Him (intellectually) as well. It might be because of my "new" adoptive father combined with my accepting salvation during childhood. Your article made me feel sad and sweet at once, and it reminds me how much help our husbands and dads need, for many of them had poor examples if any. My husband saw me reading, and asked if there is also a "Daddy Life". Please tell your husband. :)
Posted by: Angela | June 16, 2006 9:19 PM
I appreciated this article. I am one who has had to learn how to trust in her Abba's love after having a rough experience with the rest of the men in my life. I wrote about it in my blog here if you are interested... I also wrote a poem.
http://www.xanga.com/gentlemama/495967562/daddys-little-girl.html
Posted by: Brandy Roy | June 18, 2006 7:51 PM
Yes, I'm another whose father left our home... when I was 18, an adult I thought... well past the time of needing a Dad. I met my heavenly Father that very same year and oh how grateful I was to know I still had a father, after all! My post for Father's Day is about our Abba and his loving care. Thank you for this beautiful piece of writing. YOU were so young. I grieve for your suffering.
Posted by: e-Mom | June 20, 2006 1:26 AM
Barbara: Thank you for sharing such a deeply intimate part of you with us. Both my children have been raised in a single parent home with no involvement from their father. I've watched my daughter question her acceptance and struggle with rejection over the years. But in seeking answers to the hurt and pains she found Abba Father who met her in her late youth to tell her she was not a mistake, now was she unplanned, but that He loved her, and sought her for His own. It was a life changing moment for her. I've seen her blossom into a vibrant, godly young woman as she has entered her teen years and know that it is the Father who leads her with His love in daily remembrance of His presence that has given her the faith to become who she was designed to be. I will share your story with her as she loves to hear of others who have found their real Father.
Posted by: Cindy Westmark | July 8, 2006 11:14 PM
