Respecting Your Father and On Your Relationship with Your Father, by Our Papa
The Fatherless Family |
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At this point, it's very important for me to note
that, despite the pain to which my father had subjected our family, I
did not hate him. Quite the contrary, I had a childlike affection for
my dad. During times of sobriety, he was a loving and gentle man who
returned my affection. I believe that the Lord gives children a
resilience enabling them to look up to their fathers and to love them
even amidst the most difficult of circumstances. Throughout my
childhood, I can remember times during which I felt genuine love and
kindness from my father, although they were certainly offset by the
anger and rage of his drunken episodes. It was difficult for my young
mind to reconcile those conflicting emotions, and I know that there are
millions of other children who have experienced similar feelings.
Dr. Bill Maier, vice president and child and family
psychologist here at Focus on the Family, saw the devastating impact of
fatherlessness firsthand during the years he worked at a community
mental health clinic in Long Beach, Calif. I asked him to share a bit
about that experience as I was preparing to write this letter, and this
is what he said:
"Most of the children with whom I worked were
low-income kids from single-parent homes. Many of these boys and girls
had never met their fathers. Others had dads who were living on the
street, involved in gangs, in prison or dead. The young boys, in
particular, had an incredible hunger for male attention and
affirmation. They cherished the one hour each week that I met with them
for their individual counseling session. When I visited them at their
public school, their eyes would light up and they would excitedly tell
their friends, 'That's my COUNSELOR — he's here to see ME!'
Often, their classmates (who were also fatherless) would gather around
and ask, 'Can you be my counselor, too?' My heart broke for these
children — aching for a man to simply talk to them and take an
interest in their lives. Psychiatrist Kyle Pruett at Yale University
calls this longing 'Fatherneed,' and it perfectly describes what
millions of boys and girls in the U.S. experience every day of their
lives."
This "Fatherneed" is clearly what drives many
fatherless kids (and remember, there are currently more than 24 million
of them in the U.S. alone) to turn to sex, alcohol, crime and the other
dangerous and deadly behaviors outlined in the statistics I quoted
earlier. It is only by the grace of God that I was not swallowed up by
these destructive forces.
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