A Good Father

For my first twenty years, I knew very little about my father. So I made up stories in my head about him – what he was like, where he was, how he felt about me. Sometimes I told them out loud. “He lives in Texas,” (his last known address). “I spend a couple weeks with him in the summers,” (flat out lie but I thought it was what kids were supposed to do when their parents weren’t together).

“My real dad,” is how I referred to him, as if the man who had married my mother and cared for me regularly was somehow a fake. For a couple years, he was my lifeboat, my knight in shining armor. If I felt unwanted, unloved, I would imagine that my father loved me and one day was coming for me and when he did, everything would be better. How that must have hurt the people who really did love me and were invested in me (I’m so very sorry).

Then one day I finally heard the truth. It took a long time to get through the lies I had believed – the ones of my own making and others that I’d picked up along the way. I did have a “real dad,” and He loved me. I didn’t need to wait for Him to swoop in and carry me off because He had been with me in every dark and lonely place. He was deeply invested in me, longed to spend time with me, had taken care of me.  I had the right idea, but my focus was on the wrong person.

As a father to the fatherless, so is the Lord God in His holy dwelling. Psalm 68:5

God used the sin that was done against me, against my mom, to awaken my heart to my need for Him. To create in me an awareness that I was missing something, someone. It’s one of countless examples of how He works all things into His plans for my good (Romans 8:28).  I had a lot to learn about what it meant to be loved by a good Father. But it comforted me to know that He did perfectly what others had done poorly.

I still have weak spots, places where my confidence is shaky. It’s sometimes hard to remember that God is not a man, and His love for me isn’t tainted by selfishness. When I’m anxious that God will withhold or withdraw His love for me, I’ve forgotten that God is God – perfect and good and all He does is good.

Now that I’m a parent myself, I’ve come to not only see how childish I often am, but also to understand more fully what it means to be fathered by God. In my better parenting moments, I look beyond the immediate desire/temper tantrum/whining to what I think is best for their character in the long run. I care about what happens to them, how they turn out. I love my kids with a fierceness and depth they will never fully know.

The best of what we’ve received as a child or given as a parent is only the faintest shadow of the perfect love of God the Father for us, His beloved children. What would it change if we understood that this is how God feels about us? He cares what happens to us. He gives good gifts. He’s personally invested in how we turn out. He’s passionately committed to our good and well-being. He is a good Father.

See how very much our heavenly Father loves us, for he allows us to be called his children, and we really are!   1 John 3:1, emphasis added