Thoughts on...... His Fatherhood

I am starting this blog on my father’s 50^th birthday, and as I face the realization that in six months, I will be 30. And tears just filled my eyes as I wrote that. Tears that carry the memories of the first time I felt fatherless….. and how sad it is that it happened as he sat reading in the next room. Tears that remind me of the last time I felt fatherless…… as my little brother walked me down the isle.

I am amazed by the way that one person in your life can hold so much emotional weight…… and crazed that so many fatherless children grow up to create children and then neglect to father them. As the child we see only one point of view. We see that the big house and bigger gifts weren’t a substitute for love, we see that we failed somehow, that we weren’t worth the sacrifice it takes to love. And we never give up. As a person that so easily cuts people off, that is personally the most tragic…. That we never truly give up on our daddies.

When I thought about my father today, I thought about his 29^th Birthday. I was eight. My mom, little sister, and I waited for him to come home so that we could give him his gift and have cake. I remember that when he came home, he was sad. This is a memory that is fresh in my mind lately (probably because I am 29) ….and it got me thinking…. my childhood, was also his fatherhood. It was a time when he had to face his own feelings, his own fatherlessness, a time when he questioned whether his success was enough, if he would ever be happy…….. and where he was afraid to love completely, because he had loved and lost before.

I didn’t make excuses for my father today, I just thought about how human he is. And how even the great ones fail sometimes. About how even though he may have failed to give me everything I needed, he probably gave me everything he could. Somehow, today, that is enough. Somehow, believing that he wanted to love me the way I needed him to, gives me peace. And that peace concerning the first heartbreak of my life, makes me less fearful to love completely in my marriage …… And even more thankful that I married my man. A man who fathers from the heart when no one is looking. A man who looks to God as his own father. And as I remember to do the same, I heal.